Best Packet Capture Tools for Windows

Capture all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet with Telerik Fiddler HTTP(S) proxy. Inspect traffic, set breakpoints, and fiddle with requests & responses. Fiddler Everywhere is a web debugging proxy for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Capture, inspect, monitor all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet, mock requests, and diagnose network issues. Fiddler Everywhere can be used for any browser, application, process. Debug traffic from macOS, Windows, or Linux systems and iOS or Android mobile devices. Ensure the proper cookies, headers, and cache directives are transferred between the client and server. Supports any framework, including .NET, Java, Ruby, etc. Mock or modify requests and responses on any website. It’s a quick and easy way to change the request and responses to test websites without changing code. Use Fiddler Everywhere to log all HTTP/S traffic between your computer and the Internet.

Wyebot provides client-side visibility and testing for your business-critical WiFi networks through intelligent sensors and agents that simulate an expert WiFi engineer on-site—delivering insights that traditional infrastructure monitoring can't deliver. Our cloud-based platform provides 360-degree visibility across your entire network, from wireless to wired connections, client devices to access points. This comprehensive visibility captures both intermittent and critical issues, and identifies whether issues stem from the back-end network infrastructure itself or other sources, eliminating cross-team finger-pointing and accelerating resolution. Our AI-powered engine automatically detects issues and recommends specific solutions, while detailed historical data, including full packet captures, enables rapid problem resolution without costly site visits.

Tcpdump is a powerful command-line packet analyzer that allows users to display the contents of network packets transmitted or received over a network to which the computer is attached. It operates on most Unix-like systems, including Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and macOS, utilizing the libpcap library for network traffic capture. Tcpdump can read packets from a network interface card or from a previously created saved packet file, and it provides options to write packets to standard output or a file. Users can apply BPF-based filters to limit the number of packets processed, enhancing usability on networks with high traffic volumes. The tool is distributed under the BSD license, making it free software. In many operating systems tcpdump is available as a native package or port, which simplifies installation of updates and long-term maintenance.

Arkime is an open source, large-scale, full packet capturing, indexing, and database system designed to augment existing security infrastructure by storing and indexing network traffic in standard PCAP format. It offers full network visibility, facilitating the swift identification and resolution of security and network issues. Security teams gain access to the necessary network visibility data essential for responding to and investigating incidents to expose the full attack scope. Designed to be deployed across multiple clustered systems, Arkime provides the ability to scale to hundreds of gigabits per second. It allows security analysts to respond, reconstruct, investigate, and confirm information about the threats within your network, enabling appropriate responses quickly and precisely. As an open-source platform, Arkime provides users with the benefits of transparency, cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and community support.

NetworkMiner is a network forensics tool that extracts artifacts such as files, images, emails, and passwords from captured network traffic in PCAP files. It can also capture live network traffic by sniffing a network interface. Detailed information about each IP address in the analyzed network traffic is aggregated into a network host inventory, which can be used for passive asset discovery and to get an overview of communicating devices. NetworkMiner is primarily designed to run on Windows but can also be used on Linux. Since its first release in 2007, it has become a popular tool among incident response teams and law enforcement and is used by companies and organizations worldwide.

Sniffnet is a network monitoring tool designed to help users easily keep track of their Internet traffic. Whether gathering statistics or inspecting in-depth network activities, Sniffnet provides comprehensive coverage. It emphasizes user experience, ensuring ease of use compared to other cumbersome network analyzers. Completely free and open source, Sniffnet is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, with the full source code available on GitHub. Developed entirely in Rust, it leverages this modern programming language to build efficient and reliable software, emphasizing performance and safety. Key features include selecting a network adapter to inspect, applying filters to observed traffic, viewing overall statistics and real-time charts of Internet traffic, exporting comprehensive capture reports as PCAP files, identifying over 6,000 upper-layer services, protocols, trojans, and worms, discovering domain names and ASNs of hosts, pinpointing connections in the local network.

WinDump is the Windows version of tcpdump, the command line network analyzer for UNIX. WinDump is fully compatible with tcpdump and can be used to watch, diagnose and save to disk network traffic according to various complex rules. It can run under Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. WinDump captures using the WinPcap library and drivers, which are freely downloadable from the WinPcap website. WinDump supports 802.11b/g wireless capture and troubleshooting through the Riverbed AirPcap adapter. WinDump is free and is released under a BSD-style license. WinDump is able to use the interfaces exported by WinPcap. WinDump can run on all the operating systems supported by WinPcap. WinDump is the porting of tcpdump. It is possible to launch more than one session (on the same network adapter or on different adapters). Except for the increased CPU load, there are no drawbacks in using multiple applications at the same time.

Wireshark is the world’s foremost and widely-used network protocol analyzer. It lets you see what’s happening on your network at a microscopic level and is the de facto (and often de jure) standard across many commercial and non-profit enterprises, government agencies, and educational institutions. Wireshark development thrives thanks to the volunteer contributions of networking experts around the globe and is the continuation of a project started by Gerald Combs in 1998. Wireshark® is a network protocol analyzer. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network. It has a rich and powerful feature set and is world’s most popular tool of its kind. It runs on most computing platforms including Windows, macOS, Linux, and UNIX. Network professionals, security experts, developers, and educators around the world use it regularly. It is freely available as open source, and is released under the GNU General Public License version 2.

Unprecedented visibility into the vulnerable ecosystem from the eye of the storm. Prioritize response and finish taking action before the attacks occur. Early access to new vulnerability information not found in the NVD along with dozens of unique fields. Real-time monitoring of exploit PoCs; exploitation timelines; ransomware, botnet, and APT/threat actor activity. In-house developed exploit PoCs, packet captures to defend against initial access vulnerabilities. Integrate vulnerability assessment into existing asset inventory systems, anywhere package URLs or CPE strings are present. Explore VulnCheck, a next-generation cyber threat intelligence platform, which provides exploit and vulnerability intelligence directly into the tools, processes, programs, and systems that need it to outpace adversaries. Prioritize vulnerabilities that matter based on the threat landscape and defer vulnerabilities that don't.

nChronos is an application centric, deep-dive network performance analysis system. It combines the nChronos Console with the nChronos Server to deliver the capability of 24x7 continuous packet capturing, unlimited data storage, efficient data mining and in depth traffic analysis solution. nChronos captures 100% of all data captured for real-time analysis as well as historical playback. nChronos is designed for monitoring the network traffic in medium and large corporates. It connects to company's core router or switch and monitors all network traffic, emails and chat sessions inbound and outbound. Also, it provides the ability to monitor abnormal traffic and alert upon detection of "Suspicious Conversations". Only when network engineers monitor network activities of the entire network at the packet level are they able to identify abnormal network activities and protect their companies from cyber-crime and cyber-attacks.