Server Announcements

Server announcements

(Added 2020-08)

Kismet supports automatic discovery of the server by remote capture sources via server announcements.

This is disabled by default.

If configured to, Kismet will announce itself via a UDP broadcast packet on UDP port 2501. This packet contains the server UUID, name, timestamp, and web and remote capture ports.

Remote capture tools can use the --autodetect option to find the first advertising Kismet server on the local network, or the --autodetect [uuid] option to wait for a broadcast from a specific server UUID.

Typically this would be used when building a local network of remote capture devices, where the server IP may not be known, may change, or simply for convenience - for instance using a dedicated network for capture nodes throughout a building, or using an embedded device which serves DHCP to a laptop running Kismet.

Configuration options

Server announcement is controlled by the server_announce options:

• server_announce=true|false

  Enable the announcement subsystem. If not enabled, no announcements will be sent.

• server_announce_address=[ip]

  Limit the announcements to a specific interface, as controlled by IP. By default this is 0.0.0.0, or all interfaces, and typically this would be the desired configuration.

• server_announce_port=2501

  Configure the port server announcements are sent to. Generally there is no reason to change this, and changing it will prevent other devices from finding it with the default configurations.