Colasoft Blog

By Mike Williams

Colasoft Capsa 8 Free is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing network traffic, the free version of an enterprise package normally costing from $695.

The program has a vast and lengthy list of features, yet it’s also accessible to regular users. Just choosing an adapter and clicking “Start” gets you an attractive dashboard, with graphs showing network utilization, traffic, and top traffic by protocol and domain (keep in mind that Wi-Fi devices can’t be monitored in the free edition).

That’s just the start. Click the Summary tab and you’ll see the data behind the charts, the total numbers of IP and MAC addresses used in this session, the various protocols, DNS queries and responses, SMTP/ POP3/ IMAP 4 connections and a whole lot more.

Maybe you want to zoom in? Choosing one of the Conversation tabs — TCP, say — allows you to drill down, see which packets went to/from which addresses, the packet size, time sent, and more.

Colasoft Capsa 8 Free captures data packets, too, so you’re not restricted to summaries. Selecting any of these items displays the individual packets, and you can choose one, view any text it contains (maybe the password in a POP3 exchange, say). There’s even a detailed breakdown of the exchange, so for example you might view an IP packet to check its IP flags or TTL value.

This level of analysis isn’t just for a few internet standards, either. The program understands and can decode hundreds of protocols, and show you precisely what’s happening in every exchange.

Unsurprisingly, considering the full Enterprise version costs $995, the free build has a lot of restrictions. No monitoring of Wi-Fi devices, only one network adapter may be monitored, only one capture project can be run at a time, that’s limited to 4 hours maximum, only the first 10 private IP addresses will be analyzed, and so on.

Colasoft Capsa 8 Free has more than enough functionality left to make it interesting, though, for everyone from casual users to network experts. Give it a try.

from: http://betanews.com/2015/07/13/colasoft-capsa-free-is-a-comprehensive-network-analyzer/#comments

Service Port Monitor

nChronos 4.3 provides a Port view and a Service Access view to monitor and analyze service ports. The Port view calculates the statistics based on IP address + TCP/UDP service port. Together with the sorting function of nChronos, you can easily know which service ports are running on the network, and running for which IPs. The Port view further provides other information about the service port, including the application, the uplink and downlink traffic, the service access time, access times, etc. The Service Access view calculates the statistics based on server and client IPs, port number and applications. It provides the access details for each service port. You can drill a service port down to a specific service access session.

VLAN and VPN Virtual Link Support

nChronos 4.3 provides support for virtual links, including VLAN and MPLS VPN. You can add virtual interfaces and set up network links based on the virtual interfaces. There is a VLAN view, which displays traffic statistics based on VLAN ID. An MPLS VPN view is also provided to display traffic statistics based on MPLS VPN label. Together with the name table function of nChronos, you can add names for VLANs and MPLS VPNs.

Millisecond Analysis

Millisecond analysis provides traffic analysis accurate to one millisecond. It is important for users who care about transient traffic burst. Colasoft nChronos 4.3 provides millisecond traffic statistics and millisecond traffic alarm. Users can define any millisecond traffic alarm according to the need. The Millisecond Analysis window displays the millisecond traffic statistics trend charts in real-time.

Multi-Segment Analysis

Sometimes the responses from large websites are very slow, and to find out the system bottleneck for the websites, it is necessary to analyze each link of the websites. Colasoft nChronos 4.3 provides a multi-segment analysis function, which associates and correlates the data of the same conversation collected on two or more network segments, and displays graphical performance analysis results, like packet loss, delay, retransmission, etc., thus providing visibility into the areas where bottlenecks may occur. A Multi-Segment Analysis window has a timeline pane to show the traffic trends of monitored links. When a conversation is analyzed, the conversations on other segments will be picked up and analyzed automatically.

A Multi-Segment Detail Analysis window shows the detailed analysis results and visualizes the conversation flow across multiple segments. When clicking and hovering a packet, correlated packets will be highlighted, the time difference between the packets will be displayed, and the packet view will show the in-depth decoding information for that packet.

Storage Filter

nChronos 4.3 provides Storage Filter for users to store packets that match the filer rules. You can define the filter rules based on IP/MAC address, port number, protocol type, packet size, etc., and only packets matching the rules will be stored. Besides the filter rules, Storage Filter provides a functionality to truncate the stored packet to a specified size. With Storage Filter, you can store interested packets, and even store only the first few bytes of interested packets. It saves storage space, and helps you avoid from policy problems in some environment.

from: http://www.colasoft.com/nchronos/whatsnew.php