WiReShark.......

Wireshark is a well-known software in Computer Network world. In this article, I will describe it in a very simple laymen language for everyone to understand.

In the Computer world, we have heard of Internet. What Internet is, is a network of many computers connected together. Now let us compare it with the world around us. It is similar like all the houses are connected by roads. If houses represent our computers than roads are the wires which are connecting them together (here let's talk only about wired networks for the sake of simplicity). Also to enter each house we need to pass through a gate. Similarly in computer networks, there are equipments known as gateways which one need to pass to communicate to a computer. 

As the picture of network is clear let us move on to its use. We know that information is continuously flowing in these networks. This information is of many types. These different type of informations is received and processed by different set of rules. It is same like if in a house there is a family having mother father and children and a letter containing credit card statement comes, it will be processed by father only. Thus we say that there is a protocol(set of rules) of who processes what.  

So now we know that different information is processed by different protocols. Some commonly heard examples of these protocols are HTTP, SMTP, ARP etc. Now sometimes when there is a problem in the network we need to analyse this flow of information in network. For this, we need to know what type of messages the users are sending to each other and which protocols are active in the network. For this, we need a software that can collect this information for us. Wireshark software tool performs this task for us. Using Wireshark we can collect data about all the messages entering and exiting various users. Once collected different filters can be applied on the data to separate out the information we seek. It is similar to like applying filters in an excel file to get specific data.

Thus Wireshark is a very helpful tool for troubleshooting issues in computer networks.

I hope the post will give you a good picture of the tool. Please feel free to add (in comments)

 any other information on the topic which can enhance the understanding.