Main Window Overview

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The Network Analyzer Main Window:

The menu and toolbars of the Network Analyzer. These can be dragged with the mouse. You can attach menus and toolbars to any side of the window, or you can let them float in their own window. New toolbars may be added and their look can be changed in the Customize Toolbars page of the Customize dialog. This dialog can be opened with the Tools > Customize menu command, or you can right-click in the menu or toolbar area and choose Customize in the context menu. The context menu, as well as the View menu, allow to toggle the visibility of the toolbars. The commands offered by menus and toolbars can be modified on the Customize Commands page of the Customize dialog. Here you can also add additional menus.

This is the Packet Source View. Here you can see the network cards of your system with some additional information.

Note: If the packet source list is empty, you won't be able to collect any network data. This will most commonly happen because either your network cards are disabled or you are not logged on with administrative credentials.

The Packet Sink View lists all open documents in the application. The right column displays the percentage of the document's packet store that is already filled. Green colored bars and label text indicate that currently data is collected from the network, otherwise the bar is colored blue. If no bar is displayed, the document was loaded from disk.

The Packet List View displays some basic information about collected network packets including their capture time, the raw packet length, source and destination addresses of the network layers 2 and 3, and the protocol or type of the packet (you can change the visible columns on the Packet List Columns page of the Settings dialog). Clicking into the list or moving between packets with the cursor keys will show more detailed information about the selected packet in the decode and hex view below the list. You can also right-click an address and use the Properties command in its context menu to open the Edit Address Information Dialog.

The Decode View displays detailed information in clear text about packets selected in the packet list view. You can change the detail level with these toolbar buttons: (see Analyzing Data for more information).

The Hex View displays the raw data values (in hexadecimal format) corresponding to the information on the same line in the decode view. The vertical scrolling of both views is synchronized for this purpose. At the beginning of each line the position of the data in the packet is shown (zero-based decimal). If preceding data is omitted due to the detail settings, the position text will be colored dark pink.

Clicking the view tabs allows to change the active view in a straightforward manner. You can also use the Window menu for this purpose or press Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+Tab on the keyboard. To change the look of the tabs or hide them at all, use the Customize Tabbed MDI page of the Customize dialog.