Out via your network gateway (router) by setting up a (temporary) However there is a way around this, you can route the local traffic Received on the same machine they don't seem to cross the network Wireshark can't actually capture local packets on windows XP due to I haven't actually tried this, but this answer from the web sounds promising: What you need to do is to install the Microsoft loopback adapter, and then sniff on it. On Windows platform, it is also possible to capture localhost traffic using Wireshark.

There is also one bug regarding Windows XP SP 3. you have to capture all localhost traffic which can be heavy. The only disadvantage that I found is that you cannot set filters, i.e.

extremely simple to use (just start it, choose the loopback interface and destination file and that's all)Īfter the traffic has been captured, you can open it and examine in Wireshark normally.

There is a little jewel called RawCap that can capture localhost traffic on Windows. Solution 2įor some reason, none of previous answers worked in my case, so I'll post something that did the trick. The linked page contains instructions for capturing on the loopback interface. See CaptureSetup/Loopback.Īlthough the page mentions that this is not possible on Windows using Wireshark alone, you can actually record it using a workaround as mentioned in a different answer.ĮDIT: Some 3 years later, this answer is no longer completely correct. You can use the local address of your machine instead and then you'll be able to capture stuff.

If you're using Windows it's not possible - read below.

Wireshark capture localhost traffic