CommView is an application for

network monitoring Network monitoring is the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in case of outages or other trouble. Network monitorin ...

, packet analysis, and decoding. There are two editions of CommView: the standard edition for

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in ...

networks and the wireless edition for

802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer c ...

networks named CommView for WiFi. The application runs on Microsoft Windows. It is developed by TamoSoft, a privately held New Zealand company founded in 1998.

Functionality

CommView puts the network adapter into

promiscuous mode In computer networking, promiscuous mode is a mode for a wired network interface controller (NIC) or wireless network interface controller (WNIC) that causes the controller to pass all traffic it receives to the central processing unit (CPU) rat ...

and captures network traffic. It also supports capturing packets from

dial-up Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telepho ...

and virtual adapters (e.g.

ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...

or 3G modems), as well as capturing

loopback Loopback (also written loop-back) is the routing of electronic signals or digital data streams back to their source without intentional processing or modification. It is primarily a means of testing the communications infrastructure. There are m ...

traffic. Captured traffic is then analyzed and the application displays network statistics and individual packets. Packets are decoded using a protocol decoder. CommView for WiFi puts

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio w ...

adapters into

monitor mode Monitor or monitor may refer to: Places * Monitor, Alberta * Monitor, Indiana, town in the United States * Monitor, Kentucky * Monitor, Oregon, unincorporated community in the United States * Monitor, Washington * Monitor, Logan County, We ...

, providing the functionality and user experience similar to that of CommView, with the addition of

WLAN A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...

-specific features, such as displaying and decoding of management and control frames, indication of signal and noise level, and per-node and per-channel statistics.

Features

* Protocols distribution, bandwidth utilization, and network nodes charts and tables. * Detailed IP connections statistics: IP addresses, ports, sessions, etc. *

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Interne ...

analysis:

H.323 H.323 is a recommendation from the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) that defines the protocols to provide audio-visual communication sessions on any packet network. The H.323 standard addresses call signaling and control, m ...

and SIP (TMC'S Internet Telephony Magazine product of the year award) * WEP and WPA2-PSK decryption (wireless edition only) * Multi-channel capturing using several USB adapters (wireless edition only) *

Packet injection Packet injection (also known as forging packets or spoofing packets) in computer networking, is the process of interfering with an established network connection by means of constructing packets to appear as if they are part of the normal communica ...

using a packet generator * User-defined packet filters and alarms * TCP and UDP stream reconstruction * Packet-to-application mapping * Reporting * Capture log file import and export

References

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External links

Official CommView Product Page

Official CommView for WiFi Product Page
Network analyzers Wireless networking