Wireshark is licensed under the GNU General Public License.The image above shows the structure of an HTTP request in Wireshark. Finally, Wireshark's bottom pane displays the raw frame, with a hexadecimal rendition on the left and the corresponding ASCII values on the right.īecause Wireshark can also be used for eavesdropping, an organization using the tool should make sure it has a clearly defined privacy policy that spells out the rights of individuals using its network, grants permission to sniff traffic for security and troubleshooting issues and states the organization's policies for obtaining, analyzing and retaining network traffic samples. In this section of the display, Wireshark shows packet details, illustrating how various aspects of the frame can be understood as belonging to the data link layer, network layer, transport layer or application layer. Any single frame selected in the top pane is further explained in the tool's middle panel. The top panel lists frames individually with key data on a single line. Wireshark will typically display information in three panels. This information can be useful for evaluating security events and troubleshooting network security device issues. Packet capture can provide a network administrator with information about individual packets such as transmit time, source, destination, protocol type and header data. Wireshark, formerly known as Ethereal, can be used to examine the details of traffic at a variety of levels ranging from connection-level information to the bits that make up a single packet. Such a tool is often referred to as a network analyzer, network protocol analyzer or sniffer. Wireshark is an open source tool for profiling network traffic and analyzing packets.

Wireshark http address