What is Wireshark?
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.
Wireshark has a rich feature set which includes the following:
-Deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, with more being added all the time
-Live capture and offline analysis
-Standard three-pane packet browser
-Multi-platform: Runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and many others
-Captured network data can be browsed via a GUI, or via the TTY-mode TShark utility
-The most powerful display filters in the industry
-Rich VoIP analysis
-Read/write many different capture file formats: tcpdump (libpcap), Pcap NG, Catapult DCT2000, Cisco Secure IDS iplog, Microsoft Network Monitor, Network General Sniffer® (compressed and uncompressed), Sniffer® Pro, and NetXray®, Network Instruments Observer, NetScreen snoop, Novell LANalyzer, RADCOM WAN/LAN Analyzer, Shomiti/Finisar Surveyor, Tektronix K12xx, Visual Networks Visual UpTime, WildPackets EtherPeek/TokenPeek/AiroPeek, and many others
-Capture files compressed with gzip can be decompressed on the fly
-Live data can be read from Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, PPP/HDLC, ATM, Bluetooth, USB, Token Ring, Frame Relay, FDDI, and others (depending on your platform)
-Decryption support for many protocols, including IPsec, ISAKMP, Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2
-Coloring rules can be applied to the packet list for quick, intuitive analysis
-Output can be exported to XML, PostScript®, CSV, or plain text
Wireshark has a rich feature set which includes the following:
-Deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, with more being added all the time
-Live capture and offline analysis
-Standard three-pane packet browser
-Multi-platform: Runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and many others
-Captured network data can be browsed via a GUI, or via the TTY-mode TShark utility
-The most powerful display filters in the industry
-Rich VoIP analysis
-Read/write many different capture file formats: tcpdump (libpcap), Pcap NG, Catapult DCT2000, Cisco Secure IDS iplog, Microsoft Network Monitor, Network General Sniffer® (compressed and uncompressed), Sniffer® Pro, and NetXray®, Network Instruments Observer, NetScreen snoop, Novell LANalyzer, RADCOM WAN/LAN Analyzer, Shomiti/Finisar Surveyor, Tektronix K12xx, Visual Networks Visual UpTime, WildPackets EtherPeek/TokenPeek/AiroPeek, and many others
-Capture files compressed with gzip can be decompressed on the fly
-Live data can be read from Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, PPP/HDLC, ATM, Bluetooth, USB, Token Ring, Frame Relay, FDDI, and others (depending on your platform)
-Decryption support for many protocols, including IPsec, ISAKMP, Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2
-Coloring rules can be applied to the packet list for quick, intuitive analysis
-Output can be exported to XML, PostScript®, CSV, or plain text
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Categories
Network & Admin • Security & PrivacyTags
- protocol
- Network Analyzer
- network-security
- troubleshooting
- packet-capture
- analyzer
Lists containing Wireshark
Open/Free soft must have • My Windows Setup • My Productive Linux Setup • Stuff I Use At HomeWireshark
Summary
Our users have written 7 comments and reviews about Wireshark, and it has gotten 805 likes
- Open Source and Free product.
- Average rating of 3.7
- 54 alternatives listed
Popular alternatives
View allWireshark was added to AlternativeTo by jerryji on Apr 17, 2009 and this page was last updated Nov 28, 2021.
Wireshark is class when it comes to monitoring your network for weird activity. I use this so I know what my computer is actually connecting to. Does require some knowledge to use it though
I like it because it has so many features...
Something is really dodgy about last release of wireshark 3.4.0, the DMG is damaged (broken!)
Allows you to figure out who and which software is using your network. Helps detect intruders and software that spies on you.
For a network guy you have to have this software. Learn to use it. It's really fun.
Does what it should on all platforms. Powerful protocol decoders.
Great application. It's a bit much for mere mortals but that doesn't really matter.