Collecting Packets

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To collect packets from the network, you need to create a new MTNA document first. You can click the New Packet List button in the standard toolbar, use the File > New Packet List menu command, or press Ctrl+N on the keyboard to open the settings dialog for the capture filter. The settings dialog allows to change the buffer size for storing collected packets, to choose the network interface cards from which data is collected, to select the columns that shall be displayed in the list, and to configure some filters to reduce the number of packets that will be stored in the document.

This time, just click the dialog's OK button.

Now you are ready to collect some network data into the new document: If the Auto-Start Collection option in the Tools menu is enabled, the data collection will already run. Otherwise click the Start collect button in the toolbar, use the Collect > Start menu command, or press F8 on the keyboard. Depending on the network traffic on your computer, you may need to wait a moment to see some packets coming in.

As data collection is running, the packet list view will continuously display some information about the collected packets. New packets are added to the end of the list and the view will scroll if needed. You may want to stop the view from scrolling to take a closer look at some packets. To do this, click the Auto Scrolling button or use the View > Auto Scrolling menu command. Click the button again to reactivate the automatic scrolling.

To stop collecting packets, click the Stop collect button , use the Collect > Stop menu command, or press Ctrl+F8 on the keyboard.

After you stopped collecting packets, it is possible to clear the view and delete all packets by clicking the Empty Buffer button or via the Collect > Empty Buffer menu command. But do not do this now if you want to continue with the next quickstart topic.

You can also collect packet data directly into disk files. This background capturing can be started manually or via an integrated scheduler. See Scheduled Packet Capturing for more details.