Remote Packet Capture for iOS Devices

I previously posted about using the Network Link Conditioner to create realistic and “challenging” network conditions when testing iOS apps. In this post I want to highlight another useful network debugging tool which allows you capture network traffic from an iOS device.
Remote Virtual Interfaces

Remote Virtual Interfaces

As with the Network Link Conditioner you need to use a host Mac computer to perform remote packet capture of an iOS device. The only other requirement is that the device be connected to the host computer via USB. No jailbreaking or hacking of your device is required to get this to work.

The basic technique is to create an OS X remote virtual network interface that represents the remote network stack of the iOS device. Once you have the virtual interface you can use your favourite network debugging tool such as tcpdump or wireshark to view the network traffic.

The steps to get the virtual network interface up and running are as follows:

Plug your iOS device into the USB port of your Mac.
Use the Xcode organizer to obtain the UDID of the device (the value you want is named Identifier):
The remote virtual interface is created using the rvictl command, using the UDID you obtained in the previous step. The following command needs to be entered in the terminal window:

$ rvictl