How To...

• Capture packets from the network
• Open an existing capture file
• Set a filter for the navigation through the packets list
• Save the capture document in html format

How to capture packets

Selects Begin from the Capture menu. The Begin Capture Dialog Window will be opened.

Capture starts when pushing on the start button; captured traffics is saved into an ACP file. Then the analysis engine (the query program) opens the ACP file, it creates a text file which represents the capture session; then it passes the text file to the interface which shows the final product.

How to open a capture file

1. Click on the voice Open in the File menu.
2. Look for the capture file name; in the folder Samples\Capture there are some examples (folder Samples\Dumpfiles contains some captures saved by other tools like SnifferPro)  saved in ACP format. The analysis engine used by Analyzer saves the Capture documents in the ACP format only.

Anyway Analyzer can recognize automatically the other formats of the capture files but on condition that their extensions were defined through the dialog 'Capture definitions and file extensions associations' (menu voice: Setup/Captures/Capture Association). In this dialog the user can define:

• The name of the format: for instance File NetXRay is the format used by the network analyzer NetXRay in order to save the capture files.
• The file extension: for instance the NetXRay file have the .cap extension. So Analyzer considers every file with .cap extension as a NetXRay document.
• The relative LFF file: the configuration file which describes to the Analysis engine the new capture file format.

N.B.: Analyzer can display the capture files created by WinDump and tcpdump, on condition that the capture files have the ACP extension.

Making easy the navigation through the packet list

In order to make easier the navigation through the packets list, shown in the first pane, Analyzer has the functionality of setting a filter; for instance you can set the expression 'IP' as filter, so you can navigate only through the IP packets; anyway the filter expressions can consider a lot of packet characteristics.

The filter is set through the window 'Select Filter dialog Window' (Select voice in the Edit menu): the packets satisfying the expression are also selected;  the navigation through the filtered packets is controlled with the buttons  .

Saving a capture file in html format

The capture file saved in the html format appears as it appears in the Analyzer interface; click on 'Save as' button and select the html format in the formats list; then try to open the saved file with a browser.

In the folder html there some files (java script and gif) which are used to generate the html output.