Windump A free clone of tcpdump written for Windows systems.

tcpdump The essential free packet capture tool that every network manager needs in his toolkit.

Omnipeek Network Protocol Analyzer A network monitor that can be extended to capture packets.

Paessler Packet Capture Tool A packet sniffer, a NetFlow sensor, an sFlow sensor, and a J-Flow sensor built into Paessler PRTG.

ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer (FREE TRIAL) A traffic analysis tool that works with NetFlow, J-Flow, sFlow Netstream, IPFIX, and AppFlow.

With a great user interface, this excellent packet sniffing software is perfect for network analysis. You can identify traffic by application, category and risk level to eliminate and filter problem traffic.

SolarWinds Deep Packet Inspection and Analysis Tool EDITOR’S CHOICE Gives detailed insights into what causes network slowness and uses deep packet inspection to allow you to resolve the root causes.

Here’s our list of the best packet sniffers: We have ranked the following packet analyzers according to the following general considerations: useful features, reliability, ease of installation, integration, of use, amount of help and support offered, how well the software is updated and maintained and how reputable the developers are in the industry.

Packet sniffing software is designed to help analyze these collected packets because even a small amount of data can result in thousands of packets which can be hard to navigate. There are many powerful tools out there that collect network traffic activity and most of them use pcap (Unix-like systems) or libcap (Windows systems) at their core to do the actual collection. Packet Sniffing is a colloquial term that refers to the art of network traffic analysis.

Wireshark network sniffer