What is Wireshark?

Wireshark, as discussed earlier, is the most popular packet analyzer, and there is a reason behind its huge fan following. It hosts tons of features, supports a huge list of common and uncommon protocols with an easy-to-navigate GUI, and can be easily installed and used on popular operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X for absolutely no cost at all.

Wireshark can be downloaded and installed from the official website (http://www.wireshark.org). The installation setup is comparatively simple, and within a few clicks, you will be up and running with Wireshark on a Windows machine.

Note

Installation guidelines for Windows, Unix, and Mac OS X can be found at https://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsug_html_chunked/ChapterBuildInstall.html.

As of writing this, the most recent version is Wireshark 1.12.6. Once downloaded and installed, you should be able to start Wireshark and will be presented with a screen similar to the one shown here: