I'm looking for a good Sniffer program

['chris']

hi everyone

I'm looking for a good Sniffer program to sniff windows switched LAN.
what kind of commercial program could you recommend ?

kind regards
chris

[Ivan Ferreira]

It depends of what do you want to do, one of the most famous is ethereal (now Wireshark):

http://www.wireshark.org/

There are also password sniffers, connection trackers, etc.

See also:

http://www.datanerds.net/~mike/dsniff.html
http://ettercap.sourceforge.net/

['chris']

I'd like to sniff the whole net for problems.

['chris']

and errors.

[Igor Karasik · Accepted solution]

http://www.wireshark.org/
is number 1 and it is free

Good commercial product is
http://www.eeye.com/html/products/iris/

Microsoft Network Monitor 3.1 is good product as well:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=18b1d59d-f4d8-4213-8d17-2f6dde7d7aac&displaylang=en

['chris']

thanks,

but what should be looking for inside the LAN if the LAN is very slowly ?

[Igor Karasik]

>>but what should be looking for inside the LAN if the LAN is very slowly ?

Slow LAN is very common description. And debugging LAN is very hard task.
Why you think your LAN is slow ?
What kind of network equipment you have ? (NIC, switches/hubs,cables,...)
What is your network map ?
Probably your problem is not related to network...

[Ashly A K]

hi!

As mentioned, http://www.wireshark.org/ is very good.

Again, if you are trying to find what is causing the slow network (LAN), it is going to be tricky.

How many PCs are there in ur network ? What type & make of switch ur using? Are all the PCs are patched and updated with latest AV signatures ?

I have used a tool called IP Meter (it is not a free ware) and we were able to find out who are the top communicators and what types of traffic is bing generated and where the traffic is going etc.

All the best,
Ashly A K
http://geocities.com/helponhpopenview/