What is Network Analysis and Sniffing?

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Network analysis is the process of capturing network traffic and inspecting it closely to determine what is happening on the network. A network analyzer decodes, or dissects, the data packets of common protocols and displays the network traffic in human-readable format. Network analysis is also known by several other names: traffic analysis, protocol analysis, sniffing, packet analysis, and eavesdropping to name a few. Sniffing tends to be one of the most popular terms in use today. However, as you will see later in this chapter, due to malicious users it has had a negative connotation in the past.

A network analyzer can be a standalone hardware device with specialized software, or it can simply be software that you install on your desktop or laptop computer. Network analyzers are available both free and commercially. Differences between network analyzers tend to depend on features such as the number of supported protocol decodes, the user interface, and graphing and statistical capabilities. Other differences include inference capabilities, such as expert analysis features, and the quality of packet decodes. Although several network analyzers all decode the same protocols, some may decode better than others.

Note 

Sniffer (with a capital “S”) is a trademark owned by Network Associates referring to its Sniffer product line. However, it has become common industry usage that a “sniffer” (with a lower case “s”) is a program that captures and analyzes network traffic.

Figure 1.1 shows the Ethereal Network Analyzer display windows. A typical network analyzer displays the captured traffic in three panes:

Figure 1.1: Example Network Analyzer Display

• Summary This pane displays a one line summary of the capture. Fields usually include date, time, source address, destination address, and the name and information about the highest-layer protocol.

• Detail This pane provides all of the details for each of the layers contained inside the captured packet in a tree-like structure.

• Data This pane displays the raw captured data both in hexadecimal and ASCII format.

A network analyzer is a combination of hardware and software. Although there are differences in each product, a network analyzer is composed of five basic parts:

• Hardware Most network analyzers are software-based and work with standard operating systems (OSs) and network interface cards (NICs). However, there are some special hardware network analyzers that offer additional benefits such as analyzing hardware faults including: Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) errors, voltage problems, cable problems, jitter, jabber, negotiation errors, etc. Some network analyzers only support Ethernet or wireless adapters, while others support multiple adapters and allow users to customize their configuration. Sometimes you will also need a hub or a cable tap to connect to the existing cable.

• Capture driver This is the part of a network analyzer that is responsible for actually capturing the raw network traffic from the cable. It will also filter out the traffic that you want and store the data in a buffer. This is the core of a network analyzer and you cannot capture data without it.

• Buffer This component stores the captured data. Data can be stored in a buffer until it is full, or in a rotation method such as “round robin” where the newest data replaces the oldest data. Buffers can be disk-based or memory-based.

• Real-time analysis This feature analyzes the data as it comes off the cable. Some network analyzers use this to find network performance issues, and network intrusion detection systems do this to look for signs of intruder activity.

• Decode This component displays the contents of the network traffic with descriptions so that it is human-readable. Decodes are specific to each protocol, so network analyzers tend to vary in the number of decodes they currently support. However, new decodes are constantly being added to network analyzers.

  Note 

  Jitter is a term used to describe the random variation in the timing of a signal. Electromagnetic interference and crosstalk with other signals can cause jitter. Jabber is when a device is improperly handling electrical signals, thus affecting the rest of the network. Faulty network interface cards can cause jabber.

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