Network Monitoring & Network Security

Network Analyzers are a valuable tool for both network administrators and hackers. There are many network analyzers on the market and one of the most sophisticated is the network analyzer from Colasoft

Network Analyzers are one of the best tools a network administrator has at his or her disposal to analyze network traffic and to troubleshoot problems. On the other hand, when a network analyzer is in the wrong hands – i.e. hackers use it – this can cause quite a lot of damage to a company or an individual, especially if the victim hasn't taken the required protective measures. You see, as with many things in life, network analyzers can be a great tool to maintain a network, yet they can be very destructive, if misused.

Network Analyzers are very common, choose a best network analyzer for you. There are many network analyzers on the market and they range from free, to cheap, to expensive, from very simple, to advanced, to packed with features. Each type of network sniffers has its purposes and if you need a simple tool for quick results on a small network, you don't have to buy the most expensive network sniffers, no matter that they have tons of features. But in reality, if you need a network analyzer for professional use, low-end sniffers are not the answer and you need something more sophisticated, for example Colasoft Network Analyzer. Colasoft Network Analyzer is built around packet sniffing but includes many other useful features as well.

As any other network analyzer, the network analyzer from Colasoft, intercepts and logs traffic, transmitted within a network (or a network segment). A network analyzer can be really invisible because it monitors the network (almost) unobtrusively. Since a network analyzer just sniffs the packets without modifying them, it doesn't cause disturbances to alert the administrator that something is going on. Unless the administrator doesn't run an anti-sniffer, the traffic can be eavesdropped and nobody will know about it.

Of course, a good network administrator knows how to detect a network analyzer, so if you plan to get Colasoft network analyzer and use it in a malicious way, don't expect that this will go unnoticed. The network analyzer in the Colasoft Network Analyzer is not stealth but since anyway Colasoft Network Analyzer is intended for network troubleshooting, not network hacking, there is no reason to worry that the network sniffer is not hidden. When a network administrator uses a network analyzer in order to legitimately monitor network traffic, he or she doesn't need cover.

One of the most important features of a network analyzer is the protocols it can sniff. In this aspect Colasoft Network Analyzer is an unbeaten network analyzer because it can monitor over 300 protocols. Colasoft knows that when the packets of major protocols are not captured, this gives a wrong impression about the traffic in the network and that is why Colasoft Network Analyzer supports so many protocols. And no, the protocols Colasoft Network Analyzer can sniff are not exotic ones – they are protocols used frequently in networks.

Additionally, new and new protocols are added to the network analyzer from Colasoft, so even if your network uses some really rare protocols, which are currently not supported by Colasoft Network Analyzer, they could be added in the future. Well, if you expect that the network sniffer from Colasoft will sniff encrypted traffic, this will not happen because no network sniffer can do it!

In case we want to sniff all images of a webpage, here is a detailed process how we can do it with Colasoft network analyzer’s "Logs" feature. I will take the CNN.com home page as an example.

Step 1. Open Log Settings

Log settings allows us to set up some conditions or exceptions whether or not record some logs in the Logs tab. If we want to display just images in the Logs tab, we must enable the HTTP Log conditions.



Step 2. Enable Http Log Conditions

We must tick before Conditions to enable it



Step 3. Input "Image" into Content Type

On the right hand, lets’ input the content type in order to filter contents



Here is an explanation of Content Type



Step 4. "OK" to Activate the Setting

Now we’ve done with the Log Settings, let’s see whether we can sniff all images of CNN.com index page. First of all, let’s start capturing with Colasoft network analyzer, then let’s input the URL into the address bar and start browsing.

Results start showing in the Logs Tab – Http Request Option, we can see all results are in image formats. We have successfully sniffed all the images on this webpage.



To view the image, we can click on the record, and it will be shown in a browser.

A Network analyzer (also called a network sniffer) can help you make your network more secure by identifying what's going on in it

Networks are large entities, even if they don't consist of thousands of machines. Large networks are especially vulnerable because they are a fruitful ground for attacks and hacking of all kinds. Even if a system administrator is a genius, he or she can't fight network security threats with bare hands.

Why Do You Need to Protect Your Network?

One of the major principles in network security is that a network is as secure as its weakest part is. In other words, it makes no sense to invest tons of money and spend many hours to secure some of the parts of a network, when there are small vulnerabilities that can be easily abused.

With networks small vulnerabilities are very common and even though one can never be sure that his or her network is secure, when no efforts in that direction are made, it is as sure as hell that this network is at risk. That is why it is absolutely clear that nobody can afford to leave a network unprotected. Fortunately, there are many tools, which help to protect a network and network analyzers are one of them.

How a network analyzer Can Protect Your Network?

Network analyzers (or network sniffers, as they are also called) can be one of the best tools you can use to protect your network. There are many types of network threats and there is no universal tool that can help you protect your network against all of them, so if you expect that a packet sniffer can safeguard your network against all kinds of threats, this is not so but it is a fact that a network sniffer can help you against many threats, both internal and external.

A network analyzer captures all the packets which go to and from your network and shows you their contents. While a network analyzer is helpless against encrypted traffic, with unencrypted traffic a network analyzer is an indispensable tool. When you have the chance to know what's going on in your network, you can easily spot the activities, which shouldn't be taking place.

For instance, if somebody is downloading files with BitTorrent, or is generating any other kind of substantial traffic, a network analyzer, such as Colasoft Network Analyzer, will display this immediately and you will know that you should take the adequate measures to stop it. Actually, a network analyzer allows to monitor all incoming and outgoing traffic and keep logs of this, so even if you don't react immediately when suspicious traffic occurs, all the traffic is logged and you can view it later.

Depending on the features of the network analyzer you have selected, you will have different options to protect your network. Some of the network sniffers with a rich feature set, for instance Colasoft Network sniffer, offers a lot in terms of traffic monitoring. Generally, even the network sniffers with less features allow to monitor suspicious activity at least from a given host or protocol.

One of the cases when network analyzer's don't offer much help is with encrypted traffic. This is a technical limitation and even though network analyzers can intercept encrypted packets, they can't break the encryption and show the actual content of the packet. However, when you are monitoring a network and you notice that there is unauthorized encrypted traffic (for instance from a given host), this should ring a bell that something not nice is probably going on and you should take the adequate measures to investigate what exactly is happening.

Overview
Not so hard for a freshman.
Auto diagnosis.
Real time capture.
If it's cheaper, I will definitely buy it!
After using Colasoft Network Analyzer, I found 3 features of this product:

a.supports the real-time capturing and monitoring
b.excellent capability of protocol analyzing (approximately 300 types) and packet decoding
c.Well, the most exciting part is the automatic expert diagnosing! That really saves so much money and time for me,and I do not worry about the solution of failure again!

Cost and performance are in desired level .

What It Is and What It Can Do

Colasoft network analyzer is an expert network analyzer designed for packet decoding and network diagnosis; it monitors the network traffic transmitted over a local host and a local network, with the ability of real time packet capture and accurate data analysis. Colasoft network analyzer makes your network operations completely transparent before you, letting you isolate and troubleshoot network problems quickly and efficiently. The flexible and intuitive user interface lets either IT professionals or novice users skilfully handle it in a few moments.

Easily understand how to use this network analyzer with samples provided with the Tool. Sample packets helps me a lot for my first time deployment by avoiding contacting the Technical Support during my initial days of using this tool.

For a Small Business Enterprise, This tool’s network diagnosis helps me to detect slow network and upgraded speed for better utilization.

I prefer this for a Medium Business Enterprise as troubleshooting network issues is simply superb.

For Medium and a Large Business Enterprises, Security is an issue .This network analyzer enhances Network Security by monitoring the network with Logs. As every packet is recorded and analyzed, loopholes can easily detect.

For every organization, security is a major concern. By using this tool Monitoring of Email Contents and Monitoring IMs, Chats is easy. Every information in Messegers, chats, HTTP Requests is logged .

Can easily find where the problem from the Packet Analysis without letting the user to report about his huge traffic.

For Internet Service Provider, this is very very useful tool. ISPs have problems of Server down issues due to huge traffics. By diagnosing with this tool, Server down issues can be reduced.
Prevent hibernation while capturing and view both IP Addresses and Hostnames. This is a good feature in upgraded version.

Colasoft network analyzer Supports Windows Vista-64 bit Edition. Able to identify and Analyze 300+ Network Protocols.

By going through the site www.colasoft.com, I came to know that Colasoft network analyzer Professional Edition available and used it for Analyses. It really good to use and operate. Everything is logged and my network usage is monitored.

Videos in the website help me to understand the ARP Attacks, Monitoring Network traffic. So I can protect my network now by identifying the deceived hosts and by identifying who is consuming maximum bandwidth in a Local Segment.

I can monitor the traffic either by protocol, IP or MAC Address. So much flexibility in using this network analyzer.

Internet Service Providers can use this tool for quick issue troubleshooting. Easy to identify problems and minimizes the time to service the customer.

The reports are displayed with Graphs and Tables .Viewing the connection in a matrix is wonderful and it is something special in Colasoft network analyzer. This pictorial epresentation is really good to sort out the issue by easily detecting.

Colasoft network analyzer has the tools that would not find in other network analyzers, including ping and scan IPs and MACS across the LAN.

Summary
Colasoft network analyzer is an easy-to-use and all-in-one tool for IT Network Administrator, IT Consultant and for a Security Manager in IT Company.