Establishing facts on cyber crime is gradually gaining wider relevance in prosecuting cyber criminals. The branch of cyber policing saddled with this responsibility is the network forensic community (researchers, developer, and investigator). However, the recurring rate of advances in cybercrime poses greater challenge to the available improvements in network forensics analysis tools (NFAT) as well as to investigators, and ultimately, researchers. The need for an efficient cutting-edge research finding in curbing network crimes therefore is undeniably critical. This paper describes the distinction between network security and network forensics. In addition, the authors identify factors that militate against most network forensic techniques as well as the research challenges in network forensics. Furthermore, the paper discusses on the current research works on network forensics analysis. This research is useful to the research community of network forensics, for knowledge on existing research techniques, and direction on further research in network forensics.
