Monitor Network Traffic Windows 11 May 2026

You download Wireshark. It’s like putting a wiretap directly on your network card. You select your Wi-Fi adapter, click "Start," and suddenly see every packet: DNS queries, ARP requests, a weird SYN packet to an unknown port 4444.

You also see a new "unidentified" device on your local network. Wait, is that your roommate’s phone or a neighbor’s hacked camera? GlassWire shows you each device’s traffic. You block the unknown MAC address. monitor network traffic windows 11

Task Manager is great for catching obvious offenders, but it lacks history. What happened 10 minutes ago? It can’t tell you. You download Wireshark

You click the tab, then "Ethernet" (or Wi-Fi). You see a graph—a blue wave of send/receive activity. It’s spiking hard, even though you’re doing "nothing." You also see a new "unidentified" device on

You install GlassWire (free version). Within 2 minutes, you get a timeline graph of your last 24 hours of traffic. You see a massive blue spike at 3:00 AM—that’s your PC waking from sleep to download Windows updates.

Resource Monitor is live only. The moment you close it, the data vanishes.