A UNIVERSITY HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT IN TURIN BECAME ONE OF THE BIGGEST NETWORK TOOLS ON GITHUB.
His name is Giuliano Bellini. Computer engineering student at Polytechnic University of Turin. Course: System and Device Programming.
The assignment: write a small program that logs network traffic to a file. Command line only. Submit it. Get a grade. Move on.
Most students did that. Giuliano didn't.
After he turned the project in, he kept working on it. Added a GUI. Added geo-location. Added a real-time chart. Added protocol detection. Added 24 language translations. Added webhook notifications. Added PCAP import that runs 2X faster than Wireshark.
Three years later, GitHub picked it for their Accelerator Program and he started working on it full-time.
He called it Sniffnet. Sniffer network.
Today:
→ 33K GitHub stars
→ 1.2K forks
→ 2,771 commits
→ 64 contributors
→ 24 supported languages
→ 16 official releases
→ Sponsored by NLnet, ADS Fund, and IPinfo
→ Featured by Windows Central as a free GlassWire and Wireshark alternative
His bio still says "pasta addicted, can't resist a good plate of spaghetti." His README still calls it "comfortably monitor your Internet traffic."
The whole thing is written in Rust. 98.8% of the codebase. MIT and Apache-2.0 dual licensed.
He refuses to add ads. He refuses to add telemetry. He refuses to lock anything behind a paid tier.
A homework assignment from Italy is now used by network engineers in every country with internet.
This is what coursework was supposed to lead to.
Repo in the first comment.