Looking into HTTP traffic with Internet Explorer

I work a lot with web applications and from time to time I need to look in to the HTTP session - what headers are sent back and forth and what web page elements takes time to load.

I have found two products that does this well. I will cover these in details below.

HttpWatch

HttpWatch from Simtec Limited. This product seems to be the most mature of these two. It have cool features, the most important one is beeing able to show you what the web client spends it time on; DNS lookup, TCP session setup, or the data transfer.

You can look into HTTPS traffic.

The major drawback is the price. It cost $295 for a one user license. As a result I did not test this product any further.

IE Inspector

IE Inspector from IEInspector Software is a nice application. It works much like HttpWatch above, but is much cheaper. It lacks the capability to show what a page spends it time on doing; you just get the end result.

You can look in to the HTTP headers sent to the web server and what HTTP headers are received. You can see detailed cache information about Internet Explorer cached elements.

You can also purchase a module that analyzes other applications that uses HTTP. This is nice if you want to test other applications communicating over HTTP.

You can look into HTTPS traffic only if you use the Internet Explorer integrated decoder.

If you buy both modules as a non-commercial license you end up with US$99. If you happen to be commercial the price is $129. Either way it is much cheaper than HttpWatch.

Ethereal

Ethereal is the Swiss army knife of packet decoding. You can't live without it. The tools mentioned above presents HTTP traffic in an easy way. But Ethereal gives you a lot more - if you learn how to use it.

It is open source. And we can't dislike open source!