But with a little practice you'll find that this information can be approachable. And it becomes more useful as your understanding of network protocols increases. In fact, these products show you more than just the esoteric binary 1s and 0s and hexadecimal equivalents of bits traveling the network. They decode and analyze network packets at a higher level, and they also provide the tools for you to delve deeper as the problem dictates. Take, for example, the case of a router.
Many networks use routers for wide-area links.
Suppose a user is having trouble getting through from the San Francisco office to the New York office over the network. You have to know what you're doing, but your comfort level will increase the more you use the analyzer. Packets, packets everywhere Simply put, network packets are bursts of electrical voltage organized into discrete packages governed by a myriad of network protocols. Each protocol works a little differently, and the job of protocol analyzers is to decode the packets into plain English. User-data packets carry the files and print jobs that travel across the wire.