If a user is familiar with the command line or commonly works in network troubleshooting, network management or tcpdump is one of the tools that you may end up preferring more than Wireshark. Alternatives to Wiresharkĭepending on your needs, working environment and level of expertise, the following alternatives to Wireshark are worth a closer look. However, if you have a more specific goal or objective in mind for what you would like to accomplish in your network analysis, one of the following tools may fit your needs better.

Over the years, the Wireshark team and the larger cybersecurity and network engineering community have published many tutorials, how-to guides and references to assist users in taking advantage of the advanced features built into Wireshark. In other words, Wireshark works just like the native tcpdump command reading traffic off of the transport layer of the OSI model, but with a host of built-in tools and features.

As it works, Wireshark’s dissectors break down what each packet is and the information that it is carrying (depending on the security protocols of the traffic), both over the air or off the wire. Originally named Ethereal when it was released back in 1998, the open-source packet analyzer was renamed to Wireshark in 2006 and has since taken the computer science world by storm.Īt its core, Wireshark puts its host’s network interface controllers into promiscuous mode so all the traffic passing by the interface is made visible to the user on its user interface. While this article can serve as an introduction to several other powerful alternatives to Wireshark, there are arguably no other tools out there on the market - open-source and commercially available - that will tell you all of the information about a packet flying across your network like Wireshark does. That is why this article will lay out some common alternatives to Wireshark that you could easily add to your information security toolbox. Similarly, it may be delivering you more data in an interface that may not always meet your particular needs. However, without a proper introduction and training with the tool, Wireshark can be very daunting to decipher and understand.

Best wireshark alternative