Sniffer® Portable Professional User's Guide - NetScout

Capturing Packets
Overview
About Capturing
This section describes Sniffer Portable Professional’s network capture
functions. The following topics are covered:
About Capturing on page 121
Capture Controls on page 122
Capture Panel on page 123
Capture Buffer on page 124
Capturing from Specific Stations (Visual Filters) on page 128
Capture Filters on page 129
Capture Triggers on page 129
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Unlike the monitoring function, which stores statistical measurements
and calculations about your network traffic, the capture function collects
and stores the actual packets from your network in a capture buffer.
During capture, the Expert analyzes the packets and displays the results
in real time. To disable the real-time Expert analysis, select Expert
Options from the Tools menu and uncheck the Expert During
Capture box.
After a capture is stopped, you can use the Sniffer Portable Professional
display function to decode and display the packets in the capture buffer,
providing you with detailed information about network transactions
(packet display). The display function also displays Expert analysis
(Expert display). Both the packet display and the Expert display are
described in Displaying Captured Data on page 157.
Sniffer Portable Professional provides capture controls on the main
toolbar and in the Capture menu to control the capture process,
configure the capture buffer (which stores the captured packets), and
define capture filters. A capture panel is also provided so that you can
view the status of a capture session.
User’s Guide 121