Chapter 1. Packet Analyzers

A packet analyzer is also known as a packet sniffer or a network protocol analyzer. Packet analyzer has the ability to grab the raw packet from the wire, wireless, Bluetooth, VLAN, PPP, and other network types, without getting processed by the application. By doing so it brings the whole science and innovation to this field. In this chapter we will see a few use cases of the packet analyzer by covering the following topics:

  • Uses for packet analyzers
  • Introducing Wireshark
  • Other packet analyzer tools
  • Mobile packet capturing

Uses for packet analyzers

More practically, packet analyzers are employed in network security and to analyze raw traffic so as to detect scans and attacks, and for sniffing, network troubleshooting, and many more uses, as shown in the following image:

Uses for packet analyzers

Packet analyzers can be used as follows:

  • Network administrators can diagnose problems on a network
  • Security architects can perform a security audit on a packet
  • Protocol developers can diagnose/learn protocol-related issues
  • White-hat hackers can find vulnerabilities in the application and fix them before black-hat hacker find them

The use is not limited to these bullet point, there are lots of new tools and innovations happening in this area. Find a use case and build your own packet analyzer; the best example is Wireshark.