SmartSniff allows you to capture TCP/IP packets that pass through your network adapter, and view the captured data as sequence of conversations between clients and servers. You can view the TCP/IP conversations in Ascii mode (for text-based protocols, like HTTP, SMTP, POP3 and FTP.) or as hex dump. (for non-text base protocols, like DNS)
SmartSniff provides 2 methods for capturing TCP/IP packets :

* Raw Sockets (Only for Windows 2000/XP or greater): Allows you to capture TCP/IP packets on your network without installing a capture driver. This method has some limitations and problems.

* WinPcap Capture Driver: Allows you to capture TCP/IP packets on all Windows operating systems. (Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003) In order to use it, you have to download and install WinPcap Capture Driver from this Web site. (WinPcap is a free open-source capture driver.)
This method is generally the preferred way to capture TCP/IP packets with SmartSniff, and it works better than the Raw Sockets method.