Pilot Swims with WireShark (by Tim O'Neill)
Editor Profile - Tim O’Neill is an independent technology consultant. He has over 30 years experience working in the WAN, Analog, ISDN, ATM and LAN test market. Tim has worked with companies like Navtel, Network General, Ganymede and ClearSight Networks and is now helping companies get lab recognition and technology verification. Tim is also the Chief Contributing Editor for LoveMyTool.com, a website designed to help network managers gain access to valuable information and real solution stories from other customers. Tim is a patent holding, published and degreed engineer, who has seen this technology grow from Teletype (current loop) data analysis to today’s 10 Gigabit LAN’s focused on business applications with heavy compliance demands. Tim can be reached at oldcommguy (at) bellsouth (dot) net.
“The CACE Team's mission is to find more and more relevant ways to make Wireshark and complementary open source tools even more useful. Pilot and upcoming development projects will make Wireshark an increasingly powerful platform for analyzing wired and wireless networks.”
-- Gerald Combs, Wireshark project creator and Director of Open Source Projects at CACE Technologies
According to Wikipedia, Pilot (Naucrates ductor) is a carnivorous fish that is a horse mackerel and belongs to the Carangidae family of fishes. It is well known that Pilot congregates around sharks, rays, and sea turtles, where it eats ectoparasites on and leftovers around the host species. They are also known to follow ships, sometimes for huge distances. Their fondness for ships led the ancients to believe that Pilot would navigate a ship to its desired course.
Pilot is also the name of a very cool networking tool being commercially introduced today and in my opinion is a professional necessity for Wireshark users. Every Wireshark user wishing for enhanced graphical displays and reports along with ripping-fast access to large data files should take the time to review Pilot and make it a must-have for your network toolkit.
Not only does it make Wireshark sing, but Pilot will help you be a more effective network manager. I believe this is another giant step for Open Source tool integration with commercial technology!
CACE Technologies releases Pilot™ - A Powerful Network Analysis, Visualization, and Reporting Tool Fully Integrated with Wireshark® for LAN and WLAN analysis
Today CACE Technologies, Inc. has officially announced the release and availability of a new and dynamic tool called “Pilot”, a powerful network visualization tool which is fully integrated with Wireshark to provide traffic visualization, charting, and reporting features which complement and enhance Wireshark usability and network visibility.
Here is a tool that, when added to Wireshark, an open source tool, raises Wireshark to a level that blows away the old standard packet analyzers, wired and wireless. AND the cost is really reasonable! With 25+ million users of Wireshark, the market potential for Pilot is huge.
Pilot was demonstrated at the inaugural Sharkfest ’08 conference held earlier this month and the developers and other attendees really loved it. Conference participants acknowledged that Pilot satisfies a much-needed requirement for enhanced analysis, visualization, and reporting to complement Wireshark’s packet capture and analysis capability.
Pilot’s “Views” extend the core analysis and visualization of the Wireshark tool. Views are based on interactive graphical elements called “Charts”, including bar and pie charts, strip charts, conversation rings, and grids. Applying a View to a traffic source triggers the Pilot analysis engine to process the packet source, passing the display results to the appropriate Charts for visualization. Pilot contains a collection of over 70 Views, including a comprehensive collection for 802.11 that can be applied directly to wireless sources, including CACE Technologies’ industry-standard AirPcap adapters.
The ability to perform advanced filtering operations is the key to effective network analysis. The integration of Pilot with Wireshark has been designed so that Wireshark’s extensive collection of capture and display filters is available for the user throughout Pilot. The use of Wireshark filters in conjunction with Pilot Views leads to virtually limitless analysis and visualization possibilities.
Drill-down is one of the most powerful and unique features of Pilot. Drill-down occurs when a View is applied to a source that itself is the result of a selection made within a Chart of a previously created View. This allows the user to pursue a deep level of analysis by continually refining the criteria for isolating anomalous network behavior or a sequence of network events. These are Visual filters, so they are easy to use and understand.
Loris Degioanni, CACE Technologies’ CTO says: “Pilot is the culmination of many man-years of development and represents what we believe to be a significant step forward for troubleshooting both wired and wireless networks. For example, Pilot, together with AirPcap, offers multi-channel, in-depth monitoring of complex WLAN environments, superior visualization capabilities for isolating suspicious traffic behavior, and Wireshark interaction which allows for immediate deep packet analysis to pinpoint WLAN problems.”
Pilot also addresses several issues that are recognized weaknesses with Wireshark: the length of time it takes to open a large trace file and the lack of built-in reporting capabilities. “A large file that takes many minutes to open with Wireshark can be opened in seconds with Pilot”, states Dr. Degioanni. “And the large selection of reports, fully integrated with Pilot Views, allows anyone to immediately create professional reports from screen displays in a variety of formats, including Word, Excel, and pdf.”
Check out CACE Technologies’ collection of very cool videos describing the Pilot interface and basic navigation.
How much does it cost? Early adopter pricing is available. A single-seat license for Pilot, including a 12-month update subscription, is $1,295 USD and can be purchased online. For enhanced wireless troubleshooting, special pricing is also available for Pilot sold in combination with one or three AirPcap Ex adapters.
Who is CACE Technologies? CACE is a group of very innovative product designers and engineers that specialize in networking solutions especially focused on enhancing the Wireshark user experience. These are experts in Windows device drivers and network monitoring tool development. CACE's core engineering team includes the creators of Wireshark and WinPcap, premier open-source tools for protocol analysis and packet capture, respectively.
Check Pilot out and let me know your thoughts!
Have a Great and Safe Day! ... OldCommGuy
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