Net-Vanguard is an advanced, high-performance network tracking and Windows Firewall management utility built using modern C# 12 and .NET 8. It leverages the raw speed of Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) and a decoupled, privilege-separated pipeline to deliver a robust, real-time networking dashboard.
- Real-time ETW Network Monitoring: Analyzes network traffic natively at the kernel level without injecting drivers or resorting to external packet sniffers.
- Granular Process Tracking: Sort network traffic (Upload, Download, Total Activity) per application natively in the UI.
- SQLite Persistent Analytics: Automatically tracks and safely perists lifetime download, upload, and blocked traffic limits cross-session natively without memory leaks.
- Adapter & Domain Analytics: View precisely which domains are communicating and how much data passes through individual Wi-Fi or Ethernet interfaces.
- Native Windows Firewall Integration: A fully integrated Firewall Rules dashboard lets you view, toggle, delete, and implicitly generate Block/Allow rules seamlessly using secure COM Interop APIs (
HNetCfg.FwPolicy2). - WinUI 3 Fluent Dashboard: A premium, fully-responsive dashboard engineered specifically for Windows 11 design idioms, featuring dark/light mode, custom integrated title bars, intelligent loading indicators,
NavigationViewcollapses, and high-performanceLiveCharts2metrics.
Because deep system APIs (ETW tracking, Firewall rules) require strict Administrator privileges on Windows, Net-Vanguard securely segregates capabilities into two isolated processes communicating over a highly optimized Named Pipe (NetVanguard_TrafficPipe & NetVanguard_CommandPipe):
- NetVanguard.Daemon (Elevated Backend): Runs as an Administrator background service. It hooks into kernel ETW network-send/receive providers to index traffic payloads, safely manipulates the Windows Defender Firewall COM object, and dispatches JSON updates.
- NetVanguard.App (Standard UI Front-end): Runs gracefully as a standard User process. It consumes the Daemon's telemetry, aggregates traffic per-process via
ObservableCollectionmodels, and renders the stunning WinUI 3 UX components.
- Windows 10 (19041) or Windows 11
- .NET 8.0 SDK
- Visual Studio 2022 (with Windows App SDK / WinUI 3 workloads)
You must run both the UI application and the background Daemon to track real-time changes accurately.
- Launch the Daemon (Requires Administrator):
Open a terminal as Administrator and execute:
dotnet run --project NetVanguard.Daemon
- Launch the UI Dashboard:
In a separate secure terminal (standard user privileges are fine), run:
dotnet run --project NetVanguard.App
Contributions are heavily encouraged! Please review our Contributing Guidelines to understand the submission process before creating Pull Requests. Check out our formatted BUG REPORT or FEATURE REQUEST templates if you find any issues!
This project is licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 License to prevent strict commercialization. For deep vulnerability reporting instructions, please review our Security Policy.
If you find Net-Vanguard useful, please consider supporting its development:
