Wireshark 4.4 boosts network protocol visibility

Incremental changes yield big improvements in Wireshark 4.4.0

Many of the changes in Wireshark 4.4.0 are of a type that Combs considers to be incremental. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t impactful.

“Continually making incremental improvements over time can be very powerful,” Combs said.

One such incremental improvement in the new Wireshark update is automatic profile switching. Combs commented that Wireshark has had support for configuration profiles for many years. They let you change things like the screen layout, coloring rules, display filter buttons, and more. This feature lets you create customized configurations for different types of traffic and environments and to quickly switch between them. 

“The 4.4.0 release also adds automatic profile switching, which allows you to associate a display filter with a configuration profile,” Combs explained. “When you load a new capture file, and a profile’s filter matches the contents of the file, Wireshark will automatically switch to that profile.”

Wireshark Foundation pushes open-source network protocol analyzer forward

Wireshark has benefitted from various corporate sponsors over the years, including Riverbed and more recently Sysdig. 

Under Sysdig’s leadership, the Wireshark Foundation was officially formed in March 2023 in an effort to provide governance and an open home for the continued evolution of the open-source technology.