As network continue to grow it is increasingly important that network administrators are aware of the different types of traffic that is traversing their networks as well as provides sufficient means for decision making process. Traffic monitoring and analysis is essential in order to more effectively troubleshoot and resolve issues when they occur, so as not to bring network services to a stand still for extended periods of time. Numerous tools are available to help administrators with the monitoring and analysis of network traffic.
This paper present a comparative analysis of five existing packet sniffers vis-à-vis their performance.