Hardware is used for packet sniffing typically works just like a router, where as software based wifi network analyzers run on the devices being monitored. Wifi network analyzers come in hardware, as well as software versions. What types of Wifi Network Analyzers are there? Some Windows versions requires WinPcap to be installed.A network protocol analyzer is a combination of programming and hardware and in certain cases, a separate hardware device that can be installed in a network or computer in order to improve its security level against viruses and other types of malicious activities. Coloring rules can be applied to the packet list, which eases analysis.Hundreds of protocols are supported, with more being added all the time.Capture files compressed with gzip can be decompressed on the fly.Read/write many different capture file formats: tcpdump (libpcap), NAI's Sniffer (compressed and uncompressed), Sniffer Pro, NetXray, Sun snoop and atmsnoop, Shomiti/Finisar Surveyor, AIX's iptrace, Microsoft's Network Monitor, Novell's LANalyzer, RADCOM's WAN/LAN Analyzer, HP-UX nettl, i4btrace from the ISDN4BSD project, Cisco Secure IDS iplog, the pppd log (pppdump-format), the AG Group's/WildPacket's EtherPeek/TokenPeek/AiroPeek, Visual Networks' Visual UpTime and many others.Live capture and offline analysis are supported.The most powerful display filters in the industry.Multi-interface: Along with a standard GUI, Wireshark includes TShark, a text-mode analyzer which is useful for remote capture, analysis, and scripting.Multi-platform: Runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and many others.Wireshark has a rich feature set which includes the following:

Hundreds of developers around the world have contributed to it, and it it still under active development. It is the continuation of a project that started in 1998. Wireshark is one of the world's foremost network protocol analyzers, and is the standard in many parts of the industry.

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