A universal message decoder that decodes any messages using user-defined message templates. A user can customize all the layers of a message, and thus, CiAll can be used to decode any protocol with predefined protocol headers. CiAll can decode messages captured by Network Generals Sniffer (R), or output of ipcapture and ipreport (UNIX utilities) or output of TCPDUMP (R) (MULTINET utility by CISCO). CiAll displays the decoded messages in SUMMARY form and also in DETAILED form. The detailed display can include several levels of decode options.