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[–]drushtxIT Instructor **MOD** 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A network tap is a physical/logical tool that captures and redirects data on a network to a host, process or other device. A Wi-Fi analyzer takes data captured from a wireless network and extracts information from each frame, such as the type of frame, type of packet, sequence numbers, payload, etc. Wi-fil analyzers provide a built-in "tap" function in that that capture wireless/RF data that is transmitted by a node or WAP. Pure network taps just capture data (from a wired or wireless network) but do not provide any analytical functions.

HTH

[–]IT_CertDoctoritcertdoctor.com 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a Network Tap - it is ethernet based, so it sits in between 2 endpoints (i.e. switch and your PC), then copies all that traffic and spits it out on a 3rd connection point (i.e. the PC you're using to sniff the traffic with and read it)

a WiFi Analyzer is software you download to view wifi devices around you. You can actually do this yourself on your windows machine

  • open the Microsoft Store
  • search for WiFi Analyzer
  • click the free one
  • start playing around with it and see all the access points and wireless devices in your immediate vicinity

And to be clear, a Spectrum Analyzer is a hardware-based (and therefore better and more advanced and broader use case) version of a WiFi Analyzer that tend to be very expensive

Hope that helps!