

There are a variety of tools on the market, most of which rely on application program interfaces (APIs) known as pcap (for Unix-like systems) or libcap (for Windows systems) to capture network traffic.

These tools aid in the identification, classification, and troubleshooting of network traffic by application type, source, and destination.

This is where packet sniffers, also known as network sniffers or network analyzers, come into play. Getting to the root cause of performance problems is a top priority for nearly every sysadmin. It’s no question that bottlenecks, downtime, and other common network performance issues can vastly affect the end-user experience and put productivity on hold, ultimately cutting into your company’s bottom line.
