Capturing Non Browser Traffic Under Windows

By | December 24, 2011

Today I had to inspect what traffic does a program create. For browser traffic I usually use Fiddler (it’s free and it does the job). But it doesn’t suit for a software that doesn’t use proxies. So I had to find the solution, how to capture packets sent by my program (i don’t have any sources for the program so I cannot determine what traffic it should create).

I’ve tried many programs for that, but the solution that worked was Packetyzer. It doesn’t matter that most recent version is about 5 years old – it works great under Windows 7.

In order to get it working I downloaded the program binary (you can find the link above) and installed it. The program didn’t start at its first run, so I had to install another software named Winpcap. I’ve used default settings for both programs so there are no tricks for this installation.

To start capturing the traffic you need to start Packetyzer. It asks for a new session – check “Automatic scrolling” and click “OK”.

Then choose Session->Start Capture

You’re done. Every packet that goes through your network interface will now be shown in Packetyzer.