Network Monitoring Tools
Network monitoring and packet analysis tools capture, inspect, and index network traffic for protocol analysis, session reconstruction, and traffic anomaly detection. This category covers packet sniffers, full-packet capture systems, and network security monitors.
Software in Network Monitoring Tools
5 tools| Tool | License | Platforms | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arkime Full packet capture and indexing platform for storing, searching, and inspecting PCAP files across large enterprise networks. | Apache-2.0 | Linux, FreeBSD | Open Source |
| Suricata Multi-threaded network intrusion detection, prevention, and security monitoring engine with application-layer protocol parsing. | GPL-2.0-only | Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows | Open Source |
| tcpdump Command-line packet analyzer for capturing network traffic, applying BPF filters, and saving raw PCAP files for analysis. | BSD-3-Clause | Linux, macOS, Windows, BSD | Open Source |
| Wireshark Network packet analyzer and protocol inspection tool for capturing live traffic and debugging network communications in detail. | GPL-2.0-or-later | Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD | Open Source |
| Zeek Network security monitoring framework that translates raw packet traffic into structured transaction logs and network events. | BSD-3-Clause | Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, OpenBSD | Open Source |
About Network Monitoring Tools
Network monitoring and packet analysis tools capture, inspect, and index network traffic for security analysis. The category includes packet analyzers like Wireshark and tcpdump that decode protocols at the packet level, full-packet capture systems like Arkime that store and index complete traffic histories for forensic search, and network security monitors like Zeek that generate session logs and protocol transcripts from live traffic. Packet analyzers are used for protocol-level debugging and incident investigation, letting analysts inspect individual packets, follow TCP streams, and decode application-layer protocols. Full-packet capture systems store traffic at scale, so analysts can reconstruct sessions days or weeks after an incident. Zeek takes a different approach, producing structured logs of network sessions, DNS queries, TLS certificates, and file transfers instead of storing raw packets. Tools like Kismet monitor 802.11 wireless traffic, extending packet analysis to WiFi networks. The category overlaps with detection engineering, since network monitoring tools feed data into IDS/IPS systems and SIEM platforms for alert generation.
Covered Topics
In This Catalog
- This category lists 5 tools: 5 open source.
- By platform, 5 run on Linux, 3 on Windows, and 4 on macOS.
- The most common license among the open-source tools is BSD-3-Clause (2 tools).
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Network Monitoring Tools?→
Network monitoring and packet analysis tools capture, inspect, and index network traffic for protocol analysis, session reconstruction, and traffic anomaly detection. This category covers packet sniffers, full-packet capture systems, and network security monitors.
What topics does the Network Monitoring Tools category cover?→
Packet Capture & Deep Inspection, Protocol Analysis & Decoding, Network Security Monitoring (NSM), Session Reconstruction, Wireless Traffic Analysis
Which Network Monitoring tools are open source?→
5 of the 5 tools in this category are open source: Arkime, Suricata, tcpdump, Wireshark, and Zeek.