In Wireshark, the packet bytes panes show the data of the current packet in which format?

Wireshark does not display packet bytes in decimal format - decimal representation would be less efficient and is not used in the Packet Bytes pane.

ASCII is displayed as a secondary column alongside the hex values for human readability, but it is not the sole or primary format of the Packet Bytes pane.

Binary format is not used in the Packet Bytes pane because it would require 8 characters per byte, making the output extremely verbose and difficult to read.

The Packet Bytes pane in Wireshark renders each byte of the captured packet as a two-character hexadecimal value, which is the standard format for compact and human-readable representation of binary data. Hex is used because it maps directly to nibbles of binary data while remaining far more concise than displaying raw binary. The pane also shows a side-by-side ASCII column for printable characters, but hex is the primary display format.