What are the best tools for monitoring incoming/outgoing requests from a PC or MAC?
Any tool that works well on both? (my guess is N/A)
I'm interested in capturing HTTP (possibly even TCPIP)-based requests and responses.
Does Wireshark always come out on top or are there alternatives people feel are better?
Thanks for any info.
For capturing HTTP traffic on Windows, Fiddler is much friendlier than Wireshark. If you are interested in raw packets, Wireshark is the way to go.
If you're interested mainly in HTTP traffic, I'd say Firefox with the Firebug plugin will be very helpful. Install it, enable the "net" panel, and when you load a page, Firebug will build a list of all resources loaded (html, images, etc) and will show you, for each resource, the HTTP request sent by the browser, the headers received from the server, as well as the request's raw content.
This combination will run equally well on Mac, Windows and Linux.
Based on your clarifying comment, however, I'd go the Wireshark route, it's the best way to capture, regardless of which application is generating/consuming traffic.
Wireshark is cross platform and the best tool for inspecting network traffic. It is reliable and well tested and lots of documentation on how to use it. That said this site might help you with alternatives. I haven't needed anything other than Wireshark.
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