• View and analyse the data that is currently being transferred to/from your system, a particular process, or socket.
• Log/record communications made between a client and server.
• Ensure that no sensitive data has been transferred.
• Document and analyse a protocol to determine how the client and server interact with each other.

While Port Explorer isn't a dedicated packet sniffer (that is just one of its many features), it does have remarkable packet-capturing capabilities for a program of its nature, and should accommodate the packet-capturing needs needs of most users including experienced users. Port Explorer provides advanced non-intrusive packet-sniffing and doesn't interfere in any way with the socket(s) or process(es) being monitored, and unlike most packet-sniffers, Port Explorer gives you the ability to eavesdrop on individual sockets and processes so you can zero in on the sockets you want to capture data from without capturing data from sockets you want to ignore.

Spying on a process or socket is as simple as right-clicking on it in the list, selecting the Process or Socket menu, and then selecting "Enable Spying". All data sent/received by the socket(s)/process(es) being monitored is then saved immediately as it is captured to capture.bin (in your Port Explorer directory). This file is not encrypted or compressed but is of a custom format - to view it properly, use the Socket Spy utility in Port Explorer - simply press the "Packet Data" radio option to view captured packets.

Please note that packet-sniffing of any kind adds a small amount of latency to captured transmissions due the the extra processing overhead. Such latency may not even be noticeable, but we recommend using Socket Spy only when needed, ensuring it is turned off when you're not using it.

For a detailed explanation on using Port Explorer, please see the following two examples:
 Example 1 - Capturing a request to retrieve a web page
 Example 2 - Capturing all sent and received data from a process