A Neat Free Network Monitor from Snapfiles.com and NirSoft
By Howard Berenbon
If you have a network, either at home or in your office, and have ever wondered what’s coming through from the Internet, well you can stop wondering. Because I found a neat little piece of Windows compatible freeware at SnapFiles.com called SmartSniff that lets you watch the data coming in from the Internet. It’s a TCP/IP packet capture program that monitors and records network traffic that passes through your network adapter. That includes pages visited and files coming in. And this useful little program is free from NirSoft (http://www.nirsoft.net) designers of lots of little freeware utilities.
After you download and unpack the Zip file from SnapFiles.com (click on SmartSniff to download ) you’ll be monitoring your Internet in minutes. Double click on the SmartSniff icon to begin. It’s easy to use: just click on the green start capture button to begin. After about a minute, the data received will be displayed on the screen, one line for each page captured beginning with Index 1. To view more data, click on the index number and the data will be displayed half way down the screen in a separate window.
How it Works and What You See
You can view the TCP/IP conversations in ASCII mode (for text-based protocols, like HTTP, SMTP, POP3 and FTP.) or as a hex dump. (for non-text base protocols, like DNS). It allows two methods for data packets capture:
* Raw Sockets (for Windows 2000/XP or greater)--allows capturing TCP/IP packets on your network without installing a capture driver. This method has some limitations and problems.
* WinPcap Capture Driver--allows capturing TCP/IP packets on all Windows operating systems. For this method you must download and install WinPcap Capture Driver, free from NirSoft.
For each line of capture you’ll see (if available) the Protocol, Local Address, Remote Address, Local Port, Remote Port, Local Host, Remote Host, Server Name, Packets, Data Size, Total Size and Capture Time.
SmartSniff is free for business or personal use. If you’re using it in your business, you can’t charge a customer for the software or installation. And you must make them aware that it’s completely free to use and it’s from http://www.nirsoft.net.
Have fun sniffing.
