Wondering which are the best Wireshark alternatives? Check out this list that consist of 8 similar software that is free, work with Windows, mac and offer similar features. If you are the network administrator, you would know how important is Wireshark for network monitoring, troubleshooting, or as a software analyzer.
This popular network sniffer works as a handy tool whenever there is a need for packet/network analysis. The program basically, creates a promiscuous mode for your network card allowing the computer to collect all network data. However, it cannot be used for sending the network data.
The biggest disadvantage of this program is that it can be easily hacked and thus, causing trouble for the network administrators. Therefore, users often look for safer alternatives and there are indeed plenty of them.
Here’s a quick list of some of the top Wireshark alternatives:
Quick Overivew
Savvius Omnipeek
While it’s not free software like the Wireshark, it’s known as the most powerful network protocol analyzer in the world. With the facility to decode more than 1000 protocols, it offers the fastest network troubleshooting and diagnostics for those sudden network issues.
Features:
- From 1/10/40/100 Gigabit, 802.11, to voice and video over IP – and for every level of network traffic, it works as a real-time network packet analyzer for all types of a network segment.
- Moreover, it offers responsive visualization and efficient forensics for quicker resolutions for any performance or security issues related to networks and applications.
- Popular for the network analysis process in the industry, the program helps drill down, compare, find, look across, and eventually save the MTTR (mean-time-to-resolution), effortlessly.
- Omnipeek can also extend network analysis and visibility using that may help to troubleshoot the issue
- It also offers effortless troubleshooting for its WiFi adapter that’s designed for wireless packet capture.
- Additionally, it allows live monitoring and troubleshooting for voice and video over IP traffic. It includes top-level multi-media summary data, detailed signaling, and media investigation, and call playback.
- The Ominipeek Remote Assistant (ORA), on the other hand, enables an engineer to troubleshoot end-user devices, remotely, safely, and effortlessly using password-protected files.
- The expert system beneath recommends the possible root cause interpretation for several common network issues.
- It also alerts you automatically about any potential network issues based on expert views.
- Best of all, the LiveNX feature lets you change from flow analysis to packet analysis pretty quickly.
Price: Free trial available
SolarWinds Deep Packet Inspection and Analysis tool
This network analysis tool helps you detect the real reason behind the sluggish network. From quickly looking for the reason behind the sluggish network to calculate the response time for more than 1200 applications, or automatically categorizing network traffic, SolarWinds Deep Packet Inspection and Analysis tool are one of the best alternatives to Wireshark.
Features:
- The entire motto of the tool is to quickly identify and resolve the actual cause of the network slowness.
- Deep Packet Inspection also detects the affected applications.
- Automatically calculates the response time for different applications for you such as Facebook, Skype, and more. This helps analyze the overall effect on user experience.
- Through packet analysis, it helps classify the traffic into different categories. The classification is based on the destination server IP addresses, ports in use, and also the amount of total relative volumes of traffic for each variant.
Get it here: https://www.solarwinds.com/network-performance-monitor/use-cases/deep-packet-inspection
Price: Free trial available
Zabbix
Network monitoring is one of the many services offered by Zabbix. This enterprise-ready software offers a full-grown, and business-level platform that helps keep a check on large-scale IT setups. It monitors over 100, 000 hosts and over 100, 000, 000 metrics. With distributed monitoring, it can keep a check on multiple branches and from the back of the firewall. Moreover, it functions under powerful security with end-to-end password protection, and verification.
Key Features:
- Offers intelligent and top-level automated metric collection.
- Equipped with creative templates
- Comes with agents for the majority of the platforms
- Offers auto-discovery mode
- Ability to detect problems with advanced methods such as trend prediction, detection of irregularities, and predicting problems
- Alerts you and finds remedies smartly like event correlation, adaptable escalation situation, and remote command execution.
Price: free
PRTG Monitor 
PRTG Monitor is perhaps one of the best network monitoring tools on the list as it keeps a check on all systems, devices, traffic, and applications of an IT company. The best part is, it does not even need to be installed and it comes with all that you need.
Key Features:
- Ability to scan network packets by pinging distinct IP ranges that help identify several devices and systems automatically. This further helps to create sensors from preset device templates.
- PRTG Maps allow you to make web pages with current monitoring data that are available publicly.
- You are alerted when it detects warnings or irregular metrics.
- From Traffic, bandwidth, databases, packets, or applications to IPs, IoT devices, ports, cloud services, or uptime, the tool monitors all your IT infrastructure you can think of.
- PRTG provides support for the majority of the technologies that include PowerShell, Python, Flow Technologies, VB, Batch Scripting, all versions of SNMP, WMI, Ping, SQL, and more.
- It’s compatible with all platforms including Windows and hosted versions.
- It uses an AJAX web interface or desktop client for monitoring purposes.
- Also compatible with many mobile devices.
- Can be launched within minutes
Price: starts from $1600 for 500 sensors and 1 server installation
NetStumbler
Designed specifically for Windows, NetStumbler is a program that lets you find out any WLANs (Wireless Local Area Networks) using 802.11b, 802.11a, and 802.11g. Finding this information helps you discover further details and modifications to help you configure your network.
Key Features:
- The main use of the tool is wardriving, however, it also helps verify network settings.
- The tool allows you to identify weak signal locations easily within a WLAN.
- Companies can use this to detect unauthorized WLANs offering access to outside users causing trespassing.
- Helps you choose the exact location for your WiFi router effortlessly with the essential set of tools. This helps you with a proper site inspection.
- Simple and easy-to-use GUI with equally simple window, menu, button bar, and two panels. You can find the browsing features and wireless LAN data here.
- Offers comprehensive info related to networks found and their related routers and access points.
- Chose from the list view or graph view to check the signal strength, signal loss, and noise level.
- Set the scan speed from the options window along with the Auto Adjust Using GPS option.
- Use Angle Format within the screen area to configure your GPS device, activate MIDI output of SNR, or manage Scripting.
Price: free
Sysdig
Sysdig is the first of its kind platform with consolidated cloud-native visibility and security. This multi-platform and open-source tool offers powerful and adaptable system monitoring capabilities. It also facilitates troubleshooting for the Linux environment. However, it’s also compatible with Windows and Mac OSX though, with limited features. It can also be used to analyze systems, survey, and debug.
Key Features:
- Sysdig combines the mix of all the Linux monitoring and debugging tasks in one. For instance, it offers a mix of all the tools that include, strace, tcpdump, netstat, htop, iftop, and isof in one single program.
- Fast, stable, and easy to use with a detailed approach.
- Offers built-in support for container technologies like Docker, etc.
- Provides support for handy filtering of output, and tracing of system and application.
- Allows you to capture, store, filter, and inspect the actual behavior of the Linux system along with the containers.
- Integrates easily with Puppet, Logstash, and Ansible.
- Offers the richest data source with the data-first approach that helps deliver trustworthy, and safe applications (containerized).
- It works as a container security app that runs over the cloud-native visibility and security platform.
- It offers business-level container monitoring with improved software reliability while speeding up the problem resolving capability using advanced container troubleshooting.
- Facilitates features like Linux server attack analysis for ethical hackers.
- Ca be scripted in Lua, and sample advanced log analysis can be activated.
Price: free
Cloudshark
Cloudshark is another very popular network analysis tool that converts the packet capture process of your team using a safe contemporary platform that is designed for association, organization, and investigation. This is more of on-site teamwork and a web-based platform that focuses on packet analysis for teams working on networking.
Here is how to check saved Wifi Password in Windows 10.
Key Features:
- The drag and drop feature allows you to drop the capture straight within the browser.
- Alternatively, you can upload using the API key.
- It works as a dropbox for the generated files.
- Allows you to link your work instantly so that you can share it with your customers and colleagues.
- Readers can access state-of-the-art analysis using the tool from any device with no special software required.
Price: starts from $4500 per year
Cacti
A comprehensive network monitoring solution, Cacti is built to exploit the strength of the data storage of the RRDTool and the graphing feature. It comes equipped with user management features, state-of-the-art templating, quick poller, and different data acquisition techniques. The user interface is simple, responsive, and user-friendly offering assistance for LAN-sized installations for complicated networks of innumerable devices.
Key Features:
- Provides support for endless graph items that can be described for individual graphs electively, using the data sources or the CDEFs within the program.
- Option to manipulate graph data with the help of CDEF math functions that comes integrated with the RRDTool. These functions can be explained in the program and used in the individual graph, globally.
- Offers support for all the graph item variants of RRDTool that includes HRULE, PRINT, STACK, COMMENT, AREA, VRULE, and LINE [1-3].
- Facilitates automatic grouping of AREA, STACK, and LINE[1-3] (GPRINT graph items)enabling fast re-sequencing of the graph.
- Provides support for auto-padding ensuring lining up of the graph legend text.
- RRDTool’s create and update options help create data sources.
- Offer support for RRD files with one or more data sources.
- Option to customize RRA settings.
- Offers data input method allowing users to specify custom scripts that help collect data.
- Comes with integrated SNP support, and the ability to recover data using SNMP script.
- Templating helps common graphs/data source types to be grouped together.
- While tree view allows you to create graph ranks and position graphs on the trees, list view organizes each graph title in one large list. The preview view, on the other hand, shows all the graphs in one large list.
- User management feature enables administrators to create users and make new levels of permissions.
Price: free
Final Word
While Wireshark is indeed a preferred choice above all, the alternatives may have some functions that may attract you. Instead of just depending on the program forever, it’s always better to explore and try more options for an enhanced experience. you never know it may offer something that Wireshark does not. So, make your choice from the above list of Top 8 Wireshark alternatives and feel the difference. Also, extend network analysis.
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