# Wireshark

21 Hacker News commenters recommended Wireshark and 10 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free, widely used packet analyzer that decodes many protocols and shows network traffic in detail. Critics say some protocol dissectors are immature and it is hard to learn.

## Why people recommend it

- Debugging and traffic inspection (3 comments): "great for debugging and traffic inspection" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46420709)) "Pulled out good ol' wireshark. It's the server that's erroring on the TLS handshake." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46305570)) "I currently do all this with my laptop and wireshark, it just takes time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223843))
- Strong protocol decoding and dissectors (3 comments): "The Wireshark dissectors are quite mature, SSH is covered fairly well." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46725309)) "Wireshark's protocol decoder is more advanced than tcpflow." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49752151)) "This is how it handles TLS decryption [1], which works beautifully." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46728024))
- Powerful and well regarded (2 comments): "Wireshark is extremely powerful and useful but it lives in a completely different category of tools" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46334945)) "Wireshark is a modern marvel and we all have decent hardware." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46583000))

## What people warn about

- Dissectors not fully mature (2 comments): "the dissector is not as mature as I thought" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46726078)) "the dissectors aren't very mature - you only get valid parsing up to the KeX completion messages (NEWKEYS)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46725453))
- Steep learning curve, overwhelming output (3 comments): "wireshark gives you everything and lets you drown in it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133209)) "that is too generic and with a bigger learning curve" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46334155)) "I currently do all this with my laptop and wireshark, it just takes time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48223843))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Wireshark", https://hackerapproved.com/p/wireshark/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).