What is a common tool for monitoring network traffic?

Wireshark is a powerful and widely-used tool specifically designed for monitoring network traffic. It operates by capturing and analyzing packets of data that travel across a network in real-time. This allows network administrators and technicians to troubleshoot issues, investigate network performance, and analyze security threats by providing detailed insights into the data being transmitted.

This focus on packet analysis makes it an essential tool in networking environments, as it helps identify anomalies, latency issues, and other performance-related problems in the network. In contrast, applications like Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, and Microsoft Excel serve entirely different purposes related to document creation, graphic design, and data analysis/spreadsheet functions respectively, and do not provide the necessary functionality to monitor or analyze network traffic.