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Networking & Telecommunications vocabulary · Troubleshooting and Monitoring

Packet capture

Meaning in networking & telecommunications, with examples

nounCommon term

In networking & telecommunications, packet capture means: A recording of the actual packets passing through a network interface, saved to a file so that engineers can analyse exactly what was sent and received.

In Turkish: paket yakalama, paket kaydı, trafik kaydı

How it is used

Used when other troubleshooting has not found the cause. Engineers take, open and analyse a packet capture, usually with tools such as Wireshark or tcpdump, and the file is often a .pcap. In speech people say 'grab a capture' or 'take a pcap'.

Example sentences

  1. Can you take a packet capture on the firewall while the user tries to log in?

  2. The packet capture showed the server was resetting the connections, so it wasn't a network problem.

Common collocations

  • take a packet capture
  • analyse a packet capture
  • pcap file
  • capture filter
  • packetA small unit of data sent across a network, made of a header with addressing and control information and a payload that carries part of the actual content.
  • troubleshootTo find the cause of a technical problem step by step, usually by testing one possible cause at a time, and then fix it.
  • TCPShort for Transmission Control Protocol: a protocol that sets up a connection and makes sure data arrives complete and in the right order, resending anything that is lost.
  • network monitoringContinuously checking the health and performance of network devices and links, such as availability, traffic, errors and latency, and alerting engineers when something goes wrong.
  • packet lossA situation in which some packets sent across a network never reach their destination, usually shown as a percentage; it causes slow downloads, choppy calls and frozen video.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Troubleshooting and Monitoring

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