Network administration involves troubleshooting that is not readily apparent to the eye: information packets, wireless signal strength, bottlenecks and so on. This is the reason it really is vital to have network analysis tools which will give insight into what’s specifically going on with network targeted traffic at any given moment. Colasoft Capsa is 1 such tool.Capsa performs quite a bit like Wireshark. It is a network analyzer and packet sniffer that gives excellent visualization of network traffic. The Enterprise edition of Capsa has several of your very same abilities as Wireshark, except Capsa isn’t no cost; the Enterprise edition lists for $999 for a single seat. Nor does Capsa function cross-platform; it is restricted to Windows environments, as opposed to Wireshark. However, it really is far more user-friendly than Wireshark and has a UI that is certainly familiar sufficient for any person who administers Windows servers to acquire as much as speed relatively rapidly.
Set up and Editions
Capsa is presented within a no cost edition, though you get quite a bit significantly less functionality with the cost-free version than you do with Wireshark. At no cost, Capsa provides light network evaluation and monitoring of Ethernet networks only. Capsa Enterprise is extra on par with Wireshark, capturing packets for each Ethernet and wireless site visitors.
Installation needs involve a minimum of an Intel Core 2 Duo two.4GHz processor, 4GB or a lot more of RAM, 10GB of no cost disk space for packet and log files, and World wide web Explorer 6.0 and later.
The Enterprise edition is really a rapid install and permits you to include things like options from a software program network toolset that contains a MAC scanner, Ping Tool, Packet Player, along with a Packet Builder. Installing all options only requires up about 57 MB of disk space.
The user-friendly interface gets you began proper away with establishing packet capture. Just pick the adapter you desire to capture against and create a network profile. Deciding on the Ethernet adapter of the laptop on which I installed Capsa gave me the selection to setup a network profile with a bandwidth variety from 1 Mbps as much as 1Gbps (the speed from the laptop’s adapter). In addition, you may select to monitor all network website traffic or visitors from certain applications which include MSN, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, ARP, DNS, email, and much more.
Features
When packet capturing is began, Capsa opens up to a rich, detailed dashboard. It is quick to obtain absorbed in to the interface, since there is so much information available and numerous functions to dive into. The dashboard can be a excellent starting point, because it gives at-a-glance visualization into a network. Total traffic statistics, too as top application protocols consuming one of the most bandwidth, and major IP traffic are all represented in beautifully rendered real-time graphs.
Tabs within the interface let you drill down into additional specific data to discover any anomalies or potentially problematic events that are taking place at various network layers. By way of example, the “Diagnosis” tab, pinpointed a TCP slow response error on my test network at the transport layer and supplied the source IP address, MAC address and location IP address-all beneficial in troubleshooting the problem.
The interface also supplies overall info for example packet utilization and packets-per-second. As with Wireshark, packet filters might be enabled to ensure that you can specify the precise variety of network visitors to capture. Network administrators can also view active “conversations” around the network taking place involving nodes-even if nodes are communicating with external web sites.
There’s very a bit of customization, but since Wireshark is open-source, it could deliver a larger amount of customization and integration with hardware than Capsa can, for example working with network taps-hardware devices utilized for site visitors monitoring. Amongst features that Capsa can customize is Diagnosis Settings. It is possible to edit the color coding utilized to represent detected events for example TCP Connection Refused messages or suspicious SMTP conversations at the same time as edit the severity levels and response times.
Capsa Enterprise will also capture wireless visitors, providing information and facts that’s essential for optimizing wireless environments such as the amount of noise visitors within the network.
The application also delivers logging and reporting to maintain records on network efficiency and handy in establishing network performance baselines.
Worth the Price
Capsa is often a well-designed, pretty user-friendly (at the least for network admins), Windows-oriented network analysis tool that offers network admins deep insight into their networks with out the steep finding out curve needed to find out the ins and outs of Wireshark, plus Capsa is heavier on information visualization. You have got to become serious about your analysis to step up to Capsa, however, because it charges $700 to Wireshark’s free of charge. Still, the data you acquire from Capsa to ensure that a network is safe and performing at an optimal level is priceless. Capsa is actually a well-designed network analysis tool as well as a 4.5-star Editors’ Decision choose for networking utilities.
Set up and Editions
Capsa is presented within a no cost edition, though you get quite a bit significantly less functionality with the cost-free version than you do with Wireshark. At no cost, Capsa provides light network evaluation and monitoring of Ethernet networks only. Capsa Enterprise is extra on par with Wireshark, capturing packets for each Ethernet and wireless site visitors.
Installation needs involve a minimum of an Intel Core 2 Duo two.4GHz processor, 4GB or a lot more of RAM, 10GB of no cost disk space for packet and log files, and World wide web Explorer 6.0 and later.
The Enterprise edition is really a rapid install and permits you to include things like options from a software program network toolset that contains a MAC scanner, Ping Tool, Packet Player, along with a Packet Builder. Installing all options only requires up about 57 MB of disk space.
The user-friendly interface gets you began proper away with establishing packet capture. Just pick the adapter you desire to capture against and create a network profile. Deciding on the Ethernet adapter of the laptop on which I installed Capsa gave me the selection to setup a network profile with a bandwidth variety from 1 Mbps as much as 1Gbps (the speed from the laptop’s adapter). In addition, you may select to monitor all network website traffic or visitors from certain applications which include MSN, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, ARP, DNS, email, and much more.
Features
When packet capturing is began, Capsa opens up to a rich, detailed dashboard. It is quick to obtain absorbed in to the interface, since there is so much information available and numerous functions to dive into. The dashboard can be a excellent starting point, because it gives at-a-glance visualization into a network. Total traffic statistics, too as top application protocols consuming one of the most bandwidth, and major IP traffic are all represented in beautifully rendered real-time graphs.
Tabs within the interface let you drill down into additional specific data to discover any anomalies or potentially problematic events that are taking place at various network layers. By way of example, the “Diagnosis” tab, pinpointed a TCP slow response error on my test network at the transport layer and supplied the source IP address, MAC address and location IP address-all beneficial in troubleshooting the problem.
The interface also supplies overall info for example packet utilization and packets-per-second. As with Wireshark, packet filters might be enabled to ensure that you can specify the precise variety of network visitors to capture. Network administrators can also view active “conversations” around the network taking place involving nodes-even if nodes are communicating with external web sites.
There’s very a bit of customization, but since Wireshark is open-source, it could deliver a larger amount of customization and integration with hardware than Capsa can, for example working with network taps-hardware devices utilized for site visitors monitoring. Amongst features that Capsa can customize is Diagnosis Settings. It is possible to edit the color coding utilized to represent detected events for example TCP Connection Refused messages or suspicious SMTP conversations at the same time as edit the severity levels and response times.
Capsa Enterprise will also capture wireless visitors, providing information and facts that’s essential for optimizing wireless environments such as the amount of noise visitors within the network.
The application also delivers logging and reporting to maintain records on network efficiency and handy in establishing network performance baselines.
Worth the Price
Capsa is often a well-designed, pretty user-friendly (at the least for network admins), Windows-oriented network analysis tool that offers network admins deep insight into their networks with out the steep finding out curve needed to find out the ins and outs of Wireshark, plus Capsa is heavier on information visualization. You have got to become serious about your analysis to step up to Capsa, however, because it charges $700 to Wireshark’s free of charge. Still, the data you acquire from Capsa to ensure that a network is safe and performing at an optimal level is priceless. Capsa is actually a well-designed network analysis tool as well as a 4.5-star Editors’ Decision choose for networking utilities.
