A packet sniffer — also known as a packet analyzer, protocol analyzer or network analyzer — is a piece of hardware or software used to monitor network traffic. Sniffers work by examining streams of data packets that flow between computers on a network as well as between networked computers and the larger Internet.

What is packet sniffer example?

Tcpdump and Wireshark are examples of packet sniffers. ... This simply means that all packets reaching a host will be sent to tcpdump for inspection. This setting even includes traffic that was not destined for the specific host that you are capturing on, such as broadcast and multicast traffic.

Which program are packet sniffers?

SolarWinds Network Packet Sniffer, Wireshark, PRTG Network Monitor, ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, TCPdump, and WinDump are our top recommended network sniffing tools. Wireshark, TCPdump, WinDump, Kismet are completely free tools.