Colasoft Blog

by Waqas Ahmed on May 23, 2014

If you’re a network administrator, you already know how critical it is to have tools at your disposal to keep you apprised of the status of your network and its connected systems. Among the gazillion different apps for Windows, there are numerous different tools and utilities that can aid in network administration. Colasoft’s Capsa desktop application for Windows is one such highly feature-laden, comprehensive network analyzer that can help you in analyzing both your LAN and WLAN in real-time. The application carries a wide array of features including 24 hour network monitoring, advanced protocol analyses, in-depth packet decoding and capturing, and automatic diagnosis.

The software can be deployed in a number of scenarios and usage needs, for instance, troubleshooting various network related issues, analyzing your networks performance and pinpointing any bottlenecks, detecting malicious activities in the network, for example, presence of virus or worm, as well as debugging other similar problems.

Capsa is a freeware program but you need a free license key in order to activate it. To get your license, simply fill in the sign up form at Capsa’s website  and the developer will email the key to you.

Once you have received the key, enter it in the ‘Serial Number’ field during the setup wizard, enable ‘Activate Online’ and click Next.

Capsa basically comprises of two different windows. The one that pops up upon launch, looks fairly understandable. It carries two tabs at the top labeled Capture and Replay. Under Capture, you can select the network interface you require to monitor or analyze. As stated earlier, Capsa works well with all wired and wireless interfaces, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Ethernet. And toggling an interface displays its bandwidth stats in real time.

Capsa houses a number analyses profiles, and it’s up to the users which profile they want to deploy. For an in-depth analyses, you can choose Full Analyses, but if you need to analyze different network modules separately you can do that too by choosing the appropriate profile name. These analyses types include Traffic, HTTP, Email, DNS, FTP and IM. After selecting the analyses type, you can click ‘Start’ to initiate the capture process.

The main window of Capsa then shows up, providing a wide range of statistics and analysis results. The Ribbon-like UI of Capsa carries a menu bar at top, the main Ribbon, a node explorer to the left, status bar, and the main view at center. You can also stop and resume the capture process anytime. The application displays various different kinds of information and its up to the users how they approach with the analyses of the network.

The sub-tabs within the main view section of Capsa allow you to navigate between various sub sections, fourteen in total, such as statistics, logs, reports, graphs, data packets, diagnosis results and so on. There’s also a Node Explorer to the left which gives an overview of physical and IP addresses of the network, giving you a general understanding of your network.

Capsa also lets you save captured packets by exporting the results as a Capsa-compatible file and save it to your hard disk. You can then replay the same file later from the ‘Replay’ tab that I mentioned earlier. To do that, click Replay button when Capsa is relaunched, under Replay tab, click Add, select the packet file you saved and click Start to initiate replay.

Overall, Capsa is an extremely useful and feature-rich program if you need to monitor and analyze various aspects of the network. Besides its Free version that we reviewed, it also comes in Enterprise and Professional editions both of which offer additional features. It works on all versions of Windows.

Download Capsa

From： addictivetips.com

How to Baseline Network Throughput and Performance

What is network baseline?

Do you know what your normal network throughput volume is, what types of traffic are most used in your network? If you can’t answer these questions then you should baseline your network. Network baseline is very important to network management because the data will tell you what it’s like when everything goes all right.

To baseline your network, you need software or hardware to listen on your network or a particular device. Both Colasoft nChronos and Capsa can be used to accomplish this task. Both of them are used to listen into packet data of a wire and generate all kinds of statistics on the network. To baseline a network, you need to use them to monitor the network traffic long enough, because a wider time span presents a more real picture of network traffic pattern. The use of network baseline is listed as follows:

• Understand healthy network pattern and traffic trends.
• Evaluate network management policies compliance.
• Understand how the network resources are allocated.
• Accelerate to troubleshoot network issues, i.e. abnormal traffic and spam traffic, etc.
• Provide data on network and security management to support decision making.
• Provide history statistics on network upgrade.

How to baseline a network

Preparation

If you want to baseline a network, you can start from the tasks listed below:

1. Network diagram: draw the layout of the network structure, marking IP/MAC addresses, VLAN, and places of all routers, switches, firewalls, servers, management devices, and even the data flow directions.

2. Network management policy: helps you understand what services are allowed to run on the network, what traffic is forbidden, and what services should enjoy higher priority.

Scope & Objectives

When you are ready to start baselining your network, first you should think what to baseline because it’s hard or sometimes unnecessary to include all hosts, switches and routers of a big network into you baseline report. The suggestion is that you divide the network into several layers and only baseline the critical layers. For example, only baseline the services like ERP, Email, HTTP traffic and devices like core switches, routers and critical servers.

In addition to last point, different devices, hosts and links require different types of baseline data. For example, performance and security baseline is important to the servers, and network itself cares about throughput, utilization and types of traffic.

Collect baseline data

Generally speaking, a network baseline report contains these basic data: network utilization, traffic components, top protocols talkers, top hosts talkers, conversation statistics, address statistics, packet sizes, average packet length, and key server info, etc. Both nChronos and Capsa Network Analyzer provide these types of data (figure below).

To use nChronos or Capsa to baseline a network, you need run nChronos or Capsa and use an excel sheet to record statistics over each specific time period. The following figure shows a typical Excel network benchmark table.

Then you can use formula to work out the max, min, and average value of each data type. And if you keep recording long enough, you get a much precise baseline statistics.

The use of network baseline data

The baseline data is often used when the network is reported to be running improperly. For example, when the network performance drops, you can compare the real-time datacollected from the analyzer with the baseline data to help you spot where the anomalies are.

Tips for network baselining

Update the baseline document in time

The baseline report is useful only when it provides accurate and up-to-date data. It requires that you update the data in time when there are any changes to the network. For example, when a new device is added, or a new application is implemented, the changes need to be marked on in the baseline report.

An IP/MAC database is necessary

If the network is full of desktops, laptops and switches, you should consider an IP/MAC database to record the user name and place of each individual IP and MAC address. It’s very helpful when you need figure out who is using the IP or MAC and where it is when you decide to give it an examination.

Baseline the critical devices only

Remember, you don’t have to maintain a baseline table which covers all your host computers, laptops, servers, switches, firewalls and routers. If you insist to do so, you’d better prepare enough time for it. You are suggested to only cover the mission-critical servers, such as email, web site, OA and CRM servers, and core switches and routers in your baseline report. And they’d better be organized in separate sheets to help you easily find what data you need.

Baseline over a long time period

It takes a long time to set up a network baseline because your network probably works in different patterns through Monday to Sunday. For example, on Monday morning, your email traffic could be higher than other days because there are lots of emails waiting to be processed after the weekend. On Friday afternoon after 4:00 PM, web traffic could be higher because some are browsing the web to find a place for the weekend. Therefore, your baseline report should cover the time period of a week at least, and you are suggested to extend to 2 ~ 4 weeks.

Keep baseline report easy to read

You should include all useful diagrams and illustrations in baseline report, the more the better, such as a network diagram, network policy, backups for switches and routers. The documents should be standardized with explanations and descriptions, especially for the technical terms. All of them are helpful when someone else is trying to access and read the documents.

from: colasoft.com

How to View and Analyze Historical Network Traffic

As a network forensic analysis application, nChronos allows users to view historical data just by a drag. Below is a screenshot of the Time Window, you can drag the trend charts back and forth to view the network traffic of any interested time period.

You can click the Set Time Window button  to set which time period to show:

When you select a time slice on the Time Window, the analysis views will only show data related to that time slice, and this is very convenient to analyze a traffic spike. Just select the spike to view and analyze the top talkers in that spike. Furthermore, you can double-click a record item to drill down it:

from: colasoft.com

By Shobhan Mandal

Colasoft Capsa Packet Analyzeris a free network analyzer software which can be used toanalyze and monitor WLAN andLAN networks. What it actually provides is network monitoring,in depth packet decoding, andadvanced protocol analysis of the network you are connected to. The best part is you do not have to install this software on a server to view the details; installing in any client machine of the network will provide you with all the necessary details.

 

Well the software has a number of functionalities, like:

• Troubleshooting Network Problems.
• Know about the performance of the network thus finding any bottlenecks.
• Can be used to detect virus,worms, or network attacks.
• It can also be used to teach and learn various things about network.

Here we will talk about the free version of Colasoft Capsa which has limited capabilities, like you can monitor the network continuously for 4 hours only using a profile and you can use only 1 analysis at a time.

How to use Colasoft Capsa Free Network Analyzer:

When you are downloading Colasoft Capsa, you will be asked to register with your email address. On this email address, you will be sent activation key, which will be valid for 4 months, after which you have to renew. The installation process will take a minute or two. After the installation is over you will get the home screen which looks like the first screenshot of this review.

At first, you have to select the connection from the adapter which you would like to monitor. When selected, it immediately shows a graph for the speed of the network.

The profile section allows you to select what type of analysis you would like to do. The software offers:

• Full Analysis
• HTTP Analysis
• Email Analysis
• DNS Analysis
• FTP Analysis
• IM Analysis
• Traffic Monitor

Full Analysis

Clicking on Full Analysis gives you various information regarding broadcast addresses, multicast addresses, local subnet, the IP addresses of the computer connected, etc. The center screen has various tabs like Protocol- tells about different protocols like IP, ARP, IPv6 and the amount of data and packets being transferred.

Physical Endpoint, IP Endpoint which tells about the MAC address and the IP address of the connected systems. Other tabs include TCP, IP, and UDP conversations. Somefunctionalities may not work in the free version.

HTTP Analysis

The HTTP analysis gives you the various results regarding HTTP protocol. At any normal instance it will give the IP address of the computers with which your computer has a HTP connection. Through the IP, TCP, and UDP conversation you can know the amount of data and packets being shared among the computers.

The other analysis gives out more information regarding data and packet movements in the network you are connected to.

Talking to one of my friends who is a ethical hacker and wants to remain anonymous, said that the software is great. According to him:

• This is really a great software and very powerful.
• It helps the network administrator to get various details about the network in real time.
• It can be used for educational purposes as the software tells how packet movement works actually in the network.

Downsides of the software

In the free version, the user cannot use more than one analysis simultaneously. If he wants to have a different analysis he must close the ongoing analysis. The free version has most of the good features restricted not allowing users to know the software’s working properly.

Also check out other network packet sniffer software.

Conclusion

It is a cool software to monitor the data traffic of your network. If you setup a private network you can watch out for any wrongdoings that might happen be happening in the network. It is very much useful for those who want to know more about computer networking.

Get Colasoft Capsa Packet Analyzer here.

Gizmo’s Freeware , a non-commercial community website staffed entirely by volunteers, published an article about Colasoft Capsa on Mar.6 2014 which reviewed Colaosft Capsa as the friendliest network traffic monitor ever.

Here’s the review written by Rob.Schifreen.

If you’ve ever wanted to be able to view a log of all the data that passes through your PC’s network connection (either wired or wifi), you may know that this is possible with a network protocol analyzer utility.  Such programs let you find out who your PC’s been talking to, and what was said.  You can view the content of every packet of data that travels to/from your PC and all of the remote computers and websites that you connect to.

By far the best-known of the network protocol analyzer software products is Wireshark.  It’s powerful, free, and does the job.  However, it also has a very steep learning curve and is far from intuitive to use.

Which is why I was so impressed to learn about a product recently called Capsa, which does a similar job but is way more friendly and much easier to understand.Capsa is from Colasoft, and you’ll find it at http://www.colasoft.com/capsa-free/.  Considering the full Enterprise version costs around $1000, the free no-commercial-use version, which offers pretty much all the features you’ll need, is a bargain.

It’s a 20 MB download, malware-free according to VirusTotal, and should work on all recent versions of Windows. So next time you need to know what’s eating up all the network bandwidth on a computer, or precisely what information a certain application is sending out about your PC, you can track it down with Capsa.

See more at Gizmo’s.

 

Capsa Network Analyzer Free Edition 7.7 Video Review

 

Today we use the Internet on a regular basis and in order to have a better experience while browsing we need a stable network.Capsa Network Analyzer Free Edition will provide it to you, because it constantly monitors your network, analyzes it and helps you prevent troubleshooting. The only limitation of the program is that you can start one project at a time. If you want more you have to buy the Enterprise version, which costs USD 995 for a one year license and maintenance. If you want to increase the time limit with one more year you have to buy it for additional USD 245. But if you don’t need the app for commercial usage you can use it for free without limitations.

Features

Several working modes
Analyzes networks
Monitors traffic
Shows statistics
Capsa Network Analyzer Free Edition lets you use several modes that are specialized for different tasks. With them you can make a full analysis of your network or you can choose to start theTraffic Monitor. Also, you can make a profile that is aimed at HTTP Analysis, Email Analysis, DNS Analysis, FTP Analysis and IM Analysis.

Interface

The interface of Capsa Network Analyzer Free Edition seems simple at first, but when you start any of the modes you see that it actually has a lot of sides to it. When you double-click on any of the profiles the app offers a lot of setup options that are used for the analysis. If you want to start the monitoring or the analysis you can click on the Start button and you will see that the app has a lot of instruments, which leads to a bit of a complicated interface. But after you spend some time with it you will see that all the monitoring and analysis utilities are easily used and you don’t have to be a specialist in order to use them.

Basic Operations

When you start the Full Analysis option of Capsa Network Analyzer Free Edition it opens a window for you that is comprised of different panes which show the most important functions of the program. With them you can monitor the traffic in bytes, the protocols, the IP conversations and perform many more analyses and monitoring functions. There are a lot of other instruments that you will find useful after you get used to them.

Conclusion

Capsa Network Analyzer Free Edition is a nice application not only because it is free, but also because with it you will be able to monitor all the aspects of your network. It offers a nice visualization for a vast number of utilities, so even though they are a lot you will still be able to use them without any problems.

Pros
Many utilities
Nice visualizations
Completely free version
Cons
None really

Editor review by softplanet.com

Learn more from Colasoft official website.

Reviewed by Michael Black on 13 Feb 2014 (version tested: 7.7.2)

Overview

Anyone working in the IT Industry could benefit from using Capsa Professional, this software is capable of tracking network activity to a very extensive degree. The list of available features goes on and on, with the main feature being detailed packet monitoring, and a tremendous amount of information regarding traffic on your network. Capsa also offers some really helpful guides for new users who aren’t familiar with this type of interface. Using this software can help you track down the root cause of a slow or unstable network, and also assist in fixing the problem.

Installation

You can download and install the 15 day trial of Capsa Professional for free, and it is only compatible with Windows. The trial is also limited in features, but you’ll still get the look and feel of the full program. No bundled software included, just a regular installation and you’re on your way.

Interface

Capsa Professional offers a large, scale-able interface, and is all around pretty easy to navigate once you become acquainted with the software. Most of the tools will open up in a new window, which ensures that your main screen never gets cluttered with different tabs. However, with this much information, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be overwhelming at first — unless you’re a seasoned network professional. In general, Colasoft did a great job organizing the extensive list of features, which is not an easy task.

Interface is a major issue with most suite-style network monitoring software, and it’s very refreshing to see something as well put together as Capsa.

Pros

Along with the aforementioned packet monitoring capabilities, intelligently organized UI, and the fact that it can narrow down network issues to help find the root cause of a problem, there’s plenty more. Capsa Professional can be used to scan all MAC addresses on your network, as well as grab their IPs, names, and information about the manufacturer. You can also monitor a specific network adapter, or multiple, such as your ethernet port, wfii adapter, or both.

The tutorials are fantastic as well, as mentioned above, and there are even specific guides such as “How to monitor Employee Website Visits”.

Cons

The program is stable, offers everything you’ll need in network monitoring, and there’s really nothing I can say that needs work at this point. Obviously the heavy price tag is a bit daunting, but considering this software is really only necessary in a large work environment, it’s nothing to complain about.

Alternatives

Also, Capsa even offers a free version, much more suited towards troubleshooting home network issues.

Conclusion

Troubleshooting network issues can be a major pain for any IT Technician, and I’ve personally been in that situation numerous times. Using Colasoft Capsa Professional will greatly reduce the time you spend trying to find the cause of these problems, and will help you get the issues resolved much quicker.

Requirements: P4 2.8G CPU, 2G RAM, Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher

From: download3k.com

Lee H.Badman, Wirednot, Dec. 28th, 2013

A few weeks back, I was invited by Colasoft to take a look at their Capsa 7 Enterpriseanalyzer. Having a little time off around the holidays, I finally got around to spending a couple of hours with the product. This hardly constitutes an in-depth review, but I can share some of the first impressions this interesting and powerful tool made on me during playtime.

I was vaguely familiar with Colasoft, having looked at some of their rather nifty freebies (like a multi-host ping tool) in the past. Wanting to get oriented before digging in, I popped in on the website to see what the promise of Capsa 7 Enterprise amounts to. Lifted from Colasoft’spages:

Key Features of Capsa Enterprise:

• Real-time packet capture as well as the ability to save data transmitted over local networks, including wired network and wireless network like802.11a/b/g/n;
• Identify and analyze more than 500 network protocols, as well as network applications based on the protocol analysis;
• Identify “Top Talkers” by monitoring network bandwidth and usage by capturing data packets transmitted over the network and providing summary and decoding information about these packets;
• Overview Dashboard allows you to view network statistics at a single glance, allowing for easy interpretation of network utilization data;
• Monitor and save Internet e-mail and instant messaging traffic, helping identify security and confidential data handling violations;
• Diagnose and pinpoint network problems in seconds by detecting and locating suspicious hosts;
• Ability to Map the traffic, IP address, and MAC of each host on the network, allowing for easy identification of each host and the traffic that passes through each;
• Visualize the entire network in an ellipse that shows the connections and traffic between each host.

It’s a pretty ambitious feature set, for a $995 price tag. (“Enterprise” differs from “Professional” in that Professional doesn’t do WLAN.) Capsa is only available for Windows (all versions), and this is a laptop analysis tool rather than a datacenter-racked super-sleuther. Also- WLAN support includes up to 802.11n, but not .11ac yet.

That’s the intro, but how does the product actually perform? I’ll admit to being impressed.

Though I know my way around plenty of CLIs, I’m a UI guy- I hate sucky, confusing, ill-laid out interfaces. Colasoft passes my muster in this regard- Capsa 7 packs a surprising amount of analysis info into a peppy and nicely designed dashboard. Having little Ethernet in my home these days and not wanting to get up off my duff to set up a wired test scenario (it’s the holiday break, after all) I aimed most of my tire-kicking at my home WLAN environment (currently a mix of Aerohive and Meraki). As with any analysis tool, you start by selecting your adapter, and in this case a WLAN channel and one or more SSIDs, and off you go- no AirPcap needed or any sort of special drivers (I tested it with a number of adapters, all did well).

You get variety of analysis profiles to pick from (Full, Traffic Monitoring, Security, HTTP, Email, DNS, FTP, Instant Messaging), and deep views into the gory details of 802.11/802.3 packets as you would with any competing tool. You also get just a nice range of different views that feel AirMagnet-y (or WildPackets-y) at times, but what you don’t get is any of the spectrum type channel plots that MetaGeek gives. Short of that, Capsa 7 is pretty comprehensive.

My “testing” amounted to generating a bunch of nothing-special network traffic both locally and across the Internet, and then drilling into it looking for anyplace I might want to go for analysis that Capsa fell short on. There just wasn’t any.

I am intrigued enough to play further, and my fully-functional eval copy will also get turned loose on my big WLAN when I get back to work to see how it does in the presence of an enterprise-grade 802.1x Wi-FI environment with a ridiculous order of magnitude more clients than I have at home. If there is anything good or bad to add, I’ll come back and amend this post.

Meanwhile, Colasoft does make Capsa 7 available for free 15-day trials.

If you’re in the market for a decent all-in-one wired/wireless analyzer, AND you don’t need 11ac support, AND you run Windows, you might want to have a look at Capsa 7 Enterprise.

 

 

http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-networking-management/10-free-network-analysis-tools/240163757?queryText=capsa

The article was written by Ericka Chickowski .She is an award-winning freelance writer, Ericka Chickowski specializes in coverage of information technology and business innovation. She has focused on information security for the better part of a decade and regularly writes about the security industry as a contributor to Dark Reading. Chickowski’s perspectives on business and technology have also appeared in dozens of trade and consumer magazines, includingChannel Insider, Consumers Digest,  Entrepreneur,  InformationWeek, Network Computing and SC Magazine.(Information from http://www.networkcomputing.com)

Ericka Chickowski  recommended 10 free network analysis tools in her article,the first one is Capsa Free.

This is how Ericka Chickowski describes Capsa Free.

“Capsa Free is an network analyzer designed for monitoring, troubleshooting and analysis, Capsa Freefrom Colasoft provides the capability to identify and monitor more than 300 different protocols. Users can record network profiles, create customizable reports and set customizable alarm trigger combinations. Additionally, Capsa offers MSN and Yahoo Messenger monitoring statistics, email monitoring and auto-saving of email content and an easy-to-use TCP timing sequence chart.” (Actually Capsa can  identify and monitor more than 400 different protocols now.)

Thanks Ericka, Thanks all the people who like Capsa.

 

 

 

 

As thanksgiving is on the way, to show our appreciations, Colasoft is offering a special offer for its flagship product, Capsa Network Analyzer. Capsa network analyzer is favored by network administrators as one of the most easy-to-use and powerful network analysis tools.

We have lowered the price of the Enterprise edition of Capsa network analyzer $200 for the entire month of November.  Now by entering the coupon code THANKS, you can purchase Capsa Enterprise at only $795.