Colasoft Blog

We are glad to recived a professional and exhaustive review of our latest Capsa 6.9R2 from Top4download, a burgeoning free software download site.

“The Colasoft Capsa Enterprise Edition addresses a network manager’s needs to monitor activity on a localized network. Even as a beginning user, you can easily handle this piece of nifty software due to its user-friendly interface.

By giving the user a clear view of how their network is operating, Capsa allows for easy troubleshooting due to the ability to isolate and solve different kinds of network problems…“

Click [here] to read the full story.

Causes of broadcast storm:

• Incorrect network design and plan
• Network equipment damage
• HUB is easily lead to broadcast storm as broadcast equipment
• NIC or switching equipment damage
• Network loop
• Incorrect router configuration
• Virus

How to detect Broadcast Storm:

step1. Set up broadcast packets filter
Open Filter –> Add –> From Filter Table, check "Broadcast":

step2. Detect relevant parameters of the broadcast storm

1. Statistical parameters

• broadcast packets bytes
• total broadcast packets
• packets per second
• packet size distribution
• protocol type
• etc (add according to your own network)

How to make use of these paramaters?

Take a 100M ethernet for example. The maxmize packet per second is 12.5M x 1024 = 12800 Bytes/s. If the value of packet

per second of broadcast is greater or close to it, then we can define there’s broadcast storm.
The packets sum, number, and its size distribution are different according to the size of network.
Protocol Type is mainly to stats the protocols with the largest traffic utilization. (PS: Care must be taken to distinguish ARP

Request and ARP Response, ARP Request is broadcast, while ARP Response is unicast.)

2. IPID Identification of the packet

IPID is the unique flow to identificate the packet. If there’s a protocol in a large traffic utilization, we can check its IPID in

Packets view, if they are the same, we can confirm it is caused by network loop.

Currently, network loop is one of the mainly causes to broadcast storm.

3. Check the Utilization

How to make use of the utilization paramaters?

Utilization is divided into "Utilization (bits)" & "Utilization (percentage)". The computational process of network utilization is: bits per second(in "Summary" view) / network bandwidth(100M or 1000M Ethernet). Ordinary, the network is perfect if the utilization is 50% in a ethernet, we can get the conclusion that there must be broadcast storm in the network if the utilization of broadcast is over 30%.

Download the latest Capsa 6.9R2(windows 7 supported) to monitor your network perfermances in time.

Wow! another review is done by one of the greatest media in technology, physorg.com.

As computers become more ingrained in the daily operations of most companies, it seems that running into problems occurs more frequently and with greater consequences. When it comes to computer networks, the key issues are security, speed, and reliability. A newly improved network analyzer called Capsa 6.9 R2, developed by Colasoft Inc., can help companies monitor, detect, and troubleshoot network problems. This review highlights some of the main features of Colasoft Capsa, which together make the product an overall powerful tool for maintaining network security.

To read a full review, please click here. And don’t forget to comment and vote!

We are pleased to announce one of the major media in computer and software technology, TechRepublic.com, recently published a review of Capsa network analyzer

Having good insight to your network is critical. There are so many potential issues that can be going on that any additional tool can be welcome. This can include attacks, transmissions and applications without encryption, or incorrect configurations bogging down the network.

Recently, I had a chance to evaluate the Colasoft network analyzer or Capsa. Capsa offers a lot of features in a small package, though the network analyzer field is very crowded. One thing that can differentiate a network tool is ease of use.

To read a full review, click here. Do not forget to leave a message and vote for the review!

We are glad to see one of the biggest software directory, fiberdownload.com, recently tested Capsa 6.9 R2 and wrote us a very impressive review.

Capsa is a great and affordable all in one network analyzer tool that will help you carry out your daily activities without being afraid of Internet threats.
But the first question that you ask yourself when you see this application for the first time is What CAPSA means ?

After testing it, I would say that CAPSA, apart of being a great network monitoring tool, means :
Confidence
Afordability
Performance
Safety
Advanced

It’s quite impressive that we never explained the software name like this. To view the the full review, please click here

Why should we monitor the network conversation?

In a network group, especially for the company, enterprise, school, bank, NSA, etc, the confidential information is very very important, and may very dangerous if they are divulged.

And also, for a company/enterprise boss, he can get the information of what his staff are talking about via internet, no matter they are using MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, ICQ, AIM…or Email Webmail…at any time.

Under this situation, we need a network monitor/packet sniffer, not only to monitor the network conversation, but also to guarantee our network security for prevent it from dangerous beforehand.

Resolution
Take Colasoft Capsa 6.9 for example, We will show you how to monitor the email activity & content with it step-by-step:

1. Choose “Logs” from the main window.

2. As shown in the following illustration, there’s a pop up window for changing settings after you choose the “Logs”.
Email Log→Log File Settings, then change the settings indicated by an arrow.

3. Choose Email Messages in the Logs view, you can find the detail information on all the email activities.

4. Just double-click the crossband, then you can check out the content of any email you want to read.

Conclusion:

For every organization, institution, company, enterprise…etc, the confidential information is very important that are never allowed to be leaked out.

Except the traditional File Encryption, Video Surveillance, what can we do if we are in a huge network? Under this situation, a powerful packet sniffer/network analyzer is quite a good right-hand.

We are so excited to announce a new version of our flagship product – Colasoft Capsa Network Analyzer. The latest released Capsa 6.9 R2 is now fully compatible with the current Windows 7 32bit and 64bit Edition, satisfying the users’ growing need for Win 7 compatibility.

Please check the following for new features and latest improvement of Capsa 6.9 R2. We hope you enjoy the new version! Any suggestions will be highly appreciated.

New Features:

• Support Windows 7 32bit and 64bit Edition.
• Packet Player: Support replay multiple packet files simultaneously.
• Globally added two new options: alias(or hostname) and address can be displayed simultaneously.
• There is a new option in the global Option settings users can enable to prevent hibernation when capturing.
• New protocol ISL and FCoE can be recognized now.
• Decoders for ISL, FCoE protocols.
• Support Windows Server 2008 and X64 Edition.

Improvements:

• An online help section activated in Start Page below Quick Link.
• The Loopback won’t be shown in the NIC test wizard.

Bug Fixed:

• A wrong value has been displayed in the decode area for IP Fragment Offset.
• Users login as other windows ID will have to reactivate Capsa every time they login.

Download a Free Trial Now