Wireshark

Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer. It lets you see
what's happening on your network at a microscopic level. It is the de facto
(and often de jure) standard across many industries and educational
institutions.
Wireshark development thrives thanks to the contributions of networking
experts across the globe. It is the continuation of a project that started in
1998.
Wireshark is a free and open-source packet analyzer. It is used for
network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communications
protocol development, and education. Originally named Ethereal, in May
2006 the project was renamed Wireshark due to trademark issues.
Wireshark is cross-platform, using the GTK+ widget toolkit in current
releases, and Qt in the development version, to implement its user interface,
and using pcap to capture packets; it runs on GNU/Linux,OS X, BSD, Solaris,
some other Unix-like operating systems, and Microsoft Windows. There is
also a terminal-based (non-GUI) version called TShark. Wireshark, and the
other programs distributed with it such as TShark, are free software, released
under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Features
Wireshark has a rich feature set which includes the following:

Deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, with more being added all

the time

Live capture and offline analysis

Standard three-pane packet browser

Multi-platform: Runs on Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD,

NetBSD, and many others

Captured network data can be browsed via a GUI, or via the TTY-mode
TShark utility

The most powerful display filters in the industry

Rich VoIP analysis

Read/write many different capture file formats: tcpdump (libpcap),

Pcap NG, Catapult DCT2000, Cisco Secure IDS iplog, Microsoft Network
Monitor, Network General Sniffer (compressed and uncompressed),
Sniffer Pro, and NetXray, Network Instruments Observer, NetScreen
snoop, Novell LANalyzer, RADCOM WAN/LAN Analyzer, Shomiti/Finisar
Surveyor, Tektronix K12xx, Visual Networks Visual UpTime, WildPackets
EtherPeek/TokenPeek/AiroPeek, and many others

Capture files compressed with gzip can be decompressed on the fly

Live data can be read from Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, PPP/HDLC, ATM,
Bluetooth, USB, Token Ring, Frame Relay, FDDI, and others (depending on
your platform)

Decryption support for many protocols, including IPsec, ISAKMP,

Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2

Coloring rules can be applied to the packet list for quick, intuitive
analysis

Output can be exported to XML, PostScript, CSV, or plain text

Some intended purposes

Here are some examples people use Wireshark for:

Network administrators use it to troubleshoot network problems

Network security engineers use it to examine security problems

Developers use it to debug protocol implementations

People use it to learn network protocol internals

Beside these examples Wireshark can be helpful in many other situations

too.

Figure. Wireshark captures packets and lets you examine

their contents.

Advantages
1. Live capture from many different network media
Wireshark can capture traffic from many different network media
types - and despite its name - including wireless LAN as well. Which
media types are supported, depends on many things like the
operating system you are using
2. Import files from many other capture programs
Wireshark can open packets captured from a large number of other
capture programs.

3. Export files for many other capture programs

Wireshark can save packets captured in a large number of formats
of other capture programs.
4. Many protocol decoders
There are protocol decoders (or dissectors, as they are known in
Wireshark) for a great many protocols.
5. Open Source Software
Wireshark is an open source software project, and is released under
the GNU General Public License (GPL). You can freely use Wireshark
on any number of computers you like, without worrying about
license keys or fees or such. In addition, all source code is freely
available under the GPL. Because of that, it is very easy for people
to add new protocols to Wireshark, either as plugins, or built into the
source, and they often do!

Disadvantages
Here are some things Wireshark does not provide:

Wireshark isnt an intrusion detection system. It will not warn

you when someone does strange things on your network that
he/she isnt allowed to do. However, if strange things happen,
Wireshark might help you figure out what is really going on.

Wireshark will not manipulate things on the network, it will only

"measure" things from it. Wireshark doesnt send packets on the
network or do other active things (except for name resolutions,
but even that can be disabled).