Tekguru's Review of CEniffer 3.1

[Brad Adrian]

<a href="http://www.tekguru.co.uk/PPC_Reviews/ceniffer/index.htm">http://www.tekguru.co.uk/PPC_Reviews/ceniffer/index.htm</a><br /><br />This is some cool software and could be very useful to anybody who needs to monitor and analyze network traffic using their Pocket PC. <br /><br />"When connected to an ethernet network the computers talk to each other in packets. These packets are bite size envelopes of data. CEniffer reads these packets and displays what each contains. i.e. the To and From address, Protocol or format of the packet and the actual data being sent by the computer in the packet. It uses Windows CE v3.0, and virtually any network card, including ethernet and wireless cards.<br /><br />CENiffer version 3 features:<br /><br />•The ability to save session logs in CENiffer native format, Ethereal format, and LanWatch format. <br />•Supports new devices designed for Windows CE v3.0 such as PocketPC, Handheld 2000, and PocketPC 2002 <br />•Now functions on wireless ethernet cards to analyse and monitor wireless LANs. <br />•User defined filters using Open Filter Definition Language (OFDL). <br />•Filter packets based on their source and destination addresses <br />•Filter packets based on their protocols. <br />•List packets using not only MAC (Network card hardware address), but also IP addresses. <br />•Can be custom built to reflect your unique requirements.<br /><br />Tekguru does a great job of describing why this is definitely a high-powered tool for network administrators. And, I have to admit, I'm intrigued by an application that incorporates something called "promiscuous mode." I'd be interested in knowing, though, how many of us could and would use something like this...especially in light of its high-power price tag.

[fishd1]

especially in light of its high-power price tag.

$249.95 is nothing, try $11,250 for a product called Sniffer Pro. Ok, it does a lot more than Ceniffer and requires a fully-fledged notebook (which they throw in F.O.C. btw) but it's quite a lot more expensive.

[IpaqMan2]

Wow... I didn't know Sniffer Pro cost so much.. And to think my last job gave it free to it's employees.

I could see this a very powerful tool. The PPC is very portable small and descrete in compareds to a laptop or a desktop PC. It also makes securing your network for admins who deals with packet, protocols, and mac addressing in large networks when trying to identify specific commuincations between node devices, especially for those people who are looking to gather detailed information on a corperate network. 8)

[Brad Adrian]

$249.95 is nothing, try $11,250 for a product called Sniffer Pro.

Wow.

I'm obviously not a systems administrator, so I had no idea of the cost of these applications.

[Janak Parekh]

BTW, "promiscuous" is a known mode for Ethernet. It causes the card/OS to listen for all packets that fly by, not just the ones for the respective machine/node.

For a bit more trivia, in most Unixes you must be root to put the network card in promiscuous mode.

--bdj

[Dave Conger]

$249.95 is nothing, try $11,250 for a product called Sniffer Pro.

It isn't uncommon to see software priced at upwards of $25,000 for companies. Software for regression testing and such can run that much easily, though in some cases it can fill the place of hundreds if not thousands of man hours.

[mmidgley]

Does CENiffer decode packets like SnifferPro does? :?:

I work for a company that spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on this type of software...

m.

[fishd1]

CENiffer allows you to view the contents of the IP packet but offers no "expert" opinion like Sniffer does...

However, you should be able to use CENiffer to capture to a file, then use Sniffer to import and analyze the capture.

Only trouble is, depending on the network and devices you are monitoring captures can easily be around 200 - 300 mb for a meaningful set of data... that's a lot of storage space you'll need. Easy for an iPaq with dual PCMCIA slot-jacket but a swine for us Jordy 720 users...

[bones]

I wonder if Epiphan has a relationship with any device vendors so that they could bundle hardware with their CENIffer application?

It would be a lot easier to sell this thing to my bosses if I could get the device and software from the same place..... :wink: