Knowing what’s going on with your network from moment to moment is the only way to troubleshoot issues swiftly and avoid downtime. There are lots of tools that give you on-the-fly insights into network performance, but not all are created equal. To help you find the right network sniffer, we’ve ranked the best of the bunch on the market right now. Software or hardware that can intercept data packets as they go over a network is referred to as a network sniffer tools, also known as a packet analyzer. Network administrators use sniffers to monitor network traffic at the packet level, assisting in maintaining the security and health of the network.
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What is the process of network sniffing?
The network analysis capabilities of NPM include network sniffing as a core component. The network sniffer modules are intended to provide you information about the most important metrics. This is allowing you to dig deeper for troubleshooting and enabling administrators establish dynamic alerting levels. With the Quality of Experience (QoE) module, it is simple to monitor and evaluate the traffic for certain apps. Administrators may observe a summary of network response times (TCP Handshake), application response times (Time to First Byte), traffic categories, and risk levels on the NPM dashboard. After deploying packet analysis sensors, administrators may go on to establish Quality of Experience app management clusters.
What are a few examples of network sniffing?
A network sniffer, for instance, can keep track of who is consuming excessive amounts of bandwidth at a university or commercial organization. They may also be used to assist in identifying security gaps in your surroundings. Developer security tools are all appropriate applications for experts.
However, black hat hacking is a typical usage for them nowadays. In the wrong hands, network sniffing tools may make it possible for anybody with little to no knowledge of hacking to monitor network traffic across unprotected WiFi networks. So that they can take passwords and other sensitive data. Despite having a negative image due to this, network sniffers nonetheless have a lot of useful applications.
Network packet sniffing, which monitors the data and makes sure it’s encrypted, may help you strengthen your security by carrying out network penetration testing. The following are additional benefits of network sniffers:
- finding the sources of network traffic congestion.
- evaluating the effectiveness of firewalls for network security.
- obtaining statistics information on network availability, bandwidth, etc.
SolarWinds
As well as supplying products including service desk software for IT departments, SolarWinds also has an impressive Network Performance Monitor package, part of which is the Network Packet Sniffer.
As the name suggests, this is capable of quickly identifying the causes of performance snafus. They are also ensuring that the data that it delves into is displayed in a coherent way.
Another benefit of this tool is lets you sift through network traffic according to the different types of applications across the infrastructure. Thousands of apps are supported natively, including common social media solutions, communications services, cloud storage products and much more besides.
Auvik
Like SolarWinds’ offering, there’s a lot to about the user-friendliness of Auvik’s competing network sniffing tool.
You don’t need to be a mastermind to work out to see monitoring and analysis of the software. And this kind of shallow learning curve is very useful in any new tool that’s in line for usage at your organization.
It’s also worth noting that this service is browser-based, which is convenient in terms of not being reliant on a local installation, or being beholden to a specific OS ecosystem.
Wireshark
So far we’ve discussed network sniffing tools that offer free trials. But require payment to unlock the full functionality of the premium experience in the long term.
With Wireshark, you get an open source tool that’s free to employ. And a large community of users back this up along with a vast knowledge base which you can draw upon to make the most of it.
It supports Windows, Linux, MacOS and other platforms, and makes it easy not only to track traffic, but also export the data that’s gathered in whatever format you prefer for additional analysis and reporting elsewhere.
ManageEngine
The NetFlow Analyzer from ManageEngine may have a fancy name. But it also manages to have a clear and unfussy interface and a solid set of capabilities that make it worth considering alongside its better known rivals.
You can use it to identify patterns in network traffic. And to oversee the ebb and flow of resource usage, logging everything as time passes and empowering admins with the info they need to make improvements to performance.
Paessler
Paessler’s PRTG platform is a wide-ranging monitoring solution in the same vein as SolarWinds’ equivalent suite, and factors in monitoring for traffic from the web. Alongside things like file transfers and mail servers as well.
As you’d expect from an enterprise-focused tool, it comes at a price. But you can try it out for free for up to 30 days before committing, which is helpful for budget management.
One selling point of this tool is that it offers support for mobile operating systems like Android and iOS. And so is arguably more flexible than some of its rivals.
TCPDump
The most basic of network sniffing is provided by TCPDump. It is entirely command-line based and follows the open source approach to development. You’ll need to get to grips with the syntax it deployed to execute user instructions. But once you have it’s a lightweight and efficient monitoring solution.
The thing to remember is that you can always change how you monitor your network.
Business Developmeny Manager at PAS InfoCom Technologies Ltd. Experienced in project management with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and services industry.
