Reference: Dependencies & System Requirements

Network Sandbox Engine (NSE) requires minimal system packages and Python dependencies.

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Core Python Dependencies

Package	Minimum Version	Purpose
pydantic	>= 2.0.0	Core request/event data models & validation
scapy	>= 2.5.0	Layer 2 / Layer 3/4 packet forging and injection

Two runtime dependencies, both for the engine itself. NSE has no web framework, no ASGI server and no JavaScript toolchain: the web interface was archived in 2.1.0.

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Optional extras

[cli] — the YAML suite runner

Package	Purpose
pyyaml	YAML test suite file parsing

[dev] — contributing

Package	Purpose
pytest, pytest-asyncio	Unit & integration test runners
pytest-cov	Coverage measurement and the make test-cov ratchet
ruff	Formatting & static analysis
mypy	Strict static type checking
import-linter	Architectural boundary enforcement
mkdocs-material	Material web documentation generator
mkdocstrings[python]	Automatic Python API documentation generator

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System Requirements

• Linux Kernel: 5.4+ (with network namespace and nftables support)
• Root privileges: required for ip netns and kernel trace operations
• Utilities: nft (nftables), ip (iproute2), conntrack, and nsenter (used automatically inside containers, where ip netns exec cannot mount /sys)

The nftables version matters: the trace output format has changed across releases before. NSE's CI runs its privileged suite on more than one image for that reason, and the Dockerfile exists so you can pin the version your rules are tested against.