Friday, February 4, 2011

Windows packet sniffer that can capture loopback traffic?

(This is a followup to my previous question about measuring .NET remoting traffic.)

When I am testing our Windows service / service controller GUI combination, it is often most convenient to run both pieces on my development box. With this setup, the remoting traffic between the two is via loopback, not through the Ethernet card.

Are there any software packet sniffers that can capture loopback traffic on a WinXP machine? Wireshark is a great package, but it can only capture external traffic on a Windows machine, not loopback.

  • I'm not sure if it can or not, but have you looked at Microsoft Network Monitor? It might be an option.

  • There is a page on the Wireshark wiki that addresses the problem. Short answer is, you can't do it on a Windows machine, but there might be some workarounds.

  • @Thomas Owens - No, MS Network Monitor is the same as Wireshark - no loopback capture

    From McKenzieG1
  • @McKenzieG1: Sorry about that. It was worth a shot.

  • Did you try to install the MS Loopback Adapter and try sniffing on that adapter with you favorite sniffing application?

    Also if I remember correctluy NAI Sniffer link did use to have loopback sniffing capabilities, but it's been a while I used either solution...

    tabdamage : I think that could work. IIRC I used the loopback adapter to trace network traffic of virtual machines.
    Schneider : Does the MS Loopback Adapter work or not?
  • If you don't care to pay, try this: CommView

    It seems to work, however the Evalution version doesn't display the complete packets.

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