The main function of packet sniffing is to:

Packet sniffing primarily involves monitoring network data traffic. This process enables network administrators to capture and analyze packets of data transmitted over a network in real time. By doing so, they can identify various aspects of the traffic, such as the source and destination addresses, protocols used, and the contents of the packets themselves.

Monitoring network traffic serves several critical purposes, including troubleshooting network issues, detecting unauthorized access or malicious activity, and ensuring compliance with security policies. Packet sniffers can be essential tools for maintaining the integrity and efficiency of a network.

While encrypting data or compressing it may be important functions in different contexts, they are not associated with the primary objective of packet sniffing. Similarly, generating reports can be a part of data analysis, but it is not the primary function of sniffing itself, which is focused on the real-time observation of data packets as they traverse a network.