Ethereal Alternatives
Ethereal is described as '® is used by network professionals around the world for troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development, and education. It has all of the standard features you would expect in a protocol analyzer, and several features not seen in any other product'. There are more than 10 alternatives to Ethereal for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and BSD. The best alternative is Wireshark, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Ethereal are tcpdump (Free, Open Source), netcat (Free, Open Source), NetworkMiner (Free, Open Source) and Ettercap (Free, Open Source).
- Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network. It is the de facto (and often de jure) standard across many industries and educational institutions.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- BSD
- tcpdump is a common packet analyzer that runs under the command line. It allows the user to intercept and display TCP/IP and other packets being transmitted or received over a network to which the computer is attached.
- Netcat is a featured networking utility which reads and writes data across network connections, using the TCP/IP protocol. It is designed to be a reliable "back-end" tool that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- NetworkMiner is a Network Forensic Analysis Tool (NFAT) for Windows. NetworkMiner can parse PCAP files and regenerate/reassemble transmitted files and certificates from PCAP files with HTTP, FTP, SMB, SMB2, TFTP and several other protocols.
- Ettercap is a suite for man in the middle attacks on LAN. It features sniffing of live connections, content filtering on the fly and many other interesting tricks.
- SmartSniff is a packet sniffer that capture TCP/IP packets and display them as sequence of conversations between clients and servers.
- PCAPdroid is an android app to capture the phone traffic and analyze it remotely (e.g. via Wireshark). The traffic can be easily downloaded from a remote device thanks to the integrated HTTP server, or streamed to a remote UDP receiver.
- PsPing is a command-line utility for measuring network performance.
- Colasoft network packet sniffer or network analyzer software for Windows platform, sniff packets, monitor activities and analyze protocols, best tool for network monitoring and troubleshooting, Free trial available, download now.
- Native Cocoa app for capturing and analyzing packets. Similar to Wireshark, but with a native interface (and less features). If you don't like the X11 GTK Wireshark, this is your app.