I have a simple application which connects to port 50000 on a Linux box, communicates, then disconnects.
I'd like to log the entire communication in each direction in an easy-to-read format so that I can see what is going on. The protocol is ASCII but with a few control chars thrown in (eg STX/ETX/ACK/etc, and I wouldn't like to rule out NULL chars ever appearing in the data).
I can easily run the server side at (say) port 50001 instead and have "something" listen on port 50000 and connect to port 50000 and pass the data back and forth between the two, logging it as it goes, although I don't know what to choose for "something".
Or I could look at Wireshark, which I've played with in the past but never in anger, and my general feeling is that unless I learn how to sort the trees from the wood then this is going to give me too much information and I'm going to spend more time sorting through it than I do resolving the issues in the protocol.
Or maybe there are better alternatives altogether!
[If it's relevant: the Linux server has no GUI but is a VirtualBox virtual machine on another Linux server that does have a GUI where I could run Wireshark. The device connecting to the server is not a PC and has no diagnostic capability built in.]