Packet Capture

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Packet capture is the act of capturing data packets crossing a network. Deep packet capture (DPC) is the act of capturing complete network packets (header and payload) crossing a network. Once captured and stored, either in short-term memory or long-term storage, software tools can perform Deep packet inspection (DPI) to review network packet data, perform forensics analysis to uncover the root cause of network problems, identify security threats, and ensure data communications and network usage complies with outlined policy. Some DPCs can be coupled with DPI and can as a result manage, inspect, and analyze all network traffic in real-time at wire speeds while keeping a historical archive of all network traffic for further analysis.