It might be helpful for debugging problems in your network, for instance – if you can’t connect from one computer to another, and want to understand what’s going on. Wireshark is an open-source and free tool, and is widely used to analyze network traffic. Wireshark is also a packer analyzer that displays lots of meaningful data about the frames that it sees. A sniffer could just display a stream of bits - ones and zeroes, that the network card sees. A sniffer shows us the data that passes through our network card.īut Wireshark does more than that. We use it to examine what’s going on inside a network cable, or in the air if we are dealing with a wireless network.

You can think of a sniffer as a measuring device. Wireshark is a sniffer, as well as a packet analyzer. Be sure to check my previous post about the five layers model if you need a refresher. This post relies on basic knowledge of computer networks. In this post, you will learn about the single most important and useful tool in Computer Networks – Wireshark.

Wireshark sniffer