It does so without having to purchase additional equipment which would generally cost upwards of a few thousand dollars. Wireshark 's main function is to help analyze the traffic on any network of your choice regardless of size. On top of that, given the fact it can easily read captured data from apps such as Microsoft Network Monitor, Sniffer and Snoop, it can be easily used as a third party tool for network analysis. Since it's highly versatile and very powerful, Wireshark can meet the demands of both home and enterprise level users. If you want to make sure your network is secure at all times, then Wireshark can help you monitor the traffic on it which allows you to detect performance or security issues. As for the driver, it's used to access the network's low-level layers by bypassing all network protocols. WinPcap includes a driver, a network statistics engine, kernel level packet filtering and is used in order to capture network packets without the interference of protocols. In fact, WinPcap is required in order for Wireshark to function properly and if it's not installed on your machine, then the wizard will install it automatically. It's important to remember that Wireshark is based on WinPcap. Wireshark can run on a wide range of operating systems, such as Windows, OS X, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Free BSD, HP-UH, Solaris, UNIX and Linux. Initially the tool was released in May 2006 as Ethereal, but due to trademark issues it was renamed to Wireshark soon after.

It can be successfully used for network error troubleshooting, communications and software protocol development, but also for network analysis. What makes this software stand out is the fact that you can download it and and install it free of charge. Wireshark is a popular open source protocol analyzer that allows users to capture and read info from applications such as Sniffer, Snoop and Microsoft network monitor.

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