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Packet capture is the process of intercepting and logging traffic. As data streams flow across the network, the analyzer captures each packet and, if needed, decodes the packet's raw data, showing the values of various fields in the packet, and analyzes its content according to the appropriate RFC or other specifications.
Wireshark is a data capturing program that "understands" the structure (encapsulation) of different networking protocols. It can parse and display the fields, along with their meanings as specified by different networking protocols. Wireshark uses pcap to capture packets, so it can only capture packets on the types of networks that pcap supports.
libpcap, WinPcap, and Npcap also support saving captured packets to a file, and reading files containing saved packets; applications can be written, using libpcap, WinPcap, or Npcap, to be able to capture network traffic and analyze it, or to read a saved capture and analyze it, using the same analysis code.
The following tables compare general and technical information for several packet analyzer software utilities, also known as network analyzers or packet sniffers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information.
Packet crafting is a technique that allows network administrators to probe firewall rule-sets and find entry points into a targeted system or network. This is done by manually generating packets to test network devices and behaviour, instead of using existing network traffic. [1]
tcpdump prints the contents of network packets. It can read packets from a network interface card or from a previously created saved packet file. tcpdump can write packets to standard output or a file. It is also possible to use tcpdump for the specific purpose of intercepting and displaying the communications of another user or computer.
A packet capture appliance is a standalone device that performs packet capture. [1] Packet capture appliances may be deployed anywhere on a network, however, most commonly are placed at the entrances to the network (i.e. the internet connections) and in front of critical equipment, such as servers containing sensitive information.
In digital communications networks, packet processing refers to the wide variety of algorithms that are applied to a packet of data or information as it moves through the various network elements of a communications network. With the increased performance of network interfaces, there is a corresponding need for faster packet processing.