Why would a network admin, security admin or a network developer be concerned with packet tracing software like Wireshark or Snort? To some that answer might be extremely clear, but others maybe not so much. The basic premises is that a packet tracing program like Wireshark or my own sniff is that it can read all the traffic that is coming in on the network adapter.

So I have seen this problem come up a couple of times now and really it is totally a lame issue. It involves norton internet security suite and vista, maybe XP (not positive on xp). Basically the none techno speak version of this issue is that when norton either can not update and is seriously out of date or has expired it disables the PC's entire internet access on all devices (wireless/cables etc).