Book Image

Wireshark 2 Quick Start Guide

By : Charit Mishra
Book Image

Wireshark 2 Quick Start Guide

By: Charit Mishra

Overview of this book

<p>Wireshark is an open source protocol analyser, commonly used among the network and security professionals. Currently being developed and maintained by volunteer contributions of networking experts from all over the globe. Wireshark is mainly used to analyze network traffic, analyse network issues, analyse protocol behaviour, etc. - it lets you see what's going on in your network at a granular level. This book takes you from the basics of the Wireshark environment to detecting and resolving network anomalies.</p> <p>This book will start from the basics of setting up your Wireshark environment and will walk you through the fundamentals of networking and packet analysis. As you make your way through the chapters, you will discover different ways to analyse network traffic through creation and usage of filters and statistical features. You will look at network security packet analysis, command-line utilities, and other advanced tools that will come in handy when working with day-to-day network operations.</p> <p>By the end of this book, you have enough skill with Wireshark 2 to overcome real-world network challenges.</p>
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Title Page
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
8
Mastering the Advanced Features of Wireshark
Index

What is Wireshark?


Wireshark is a packet-sniffing application that is used by IT professionals for a diverse set of requirements (including forensics, troubleshooting, and enhancing network performance). You can download it for free from https://www.wireshark.org/download.html, where it is available for the majority of platforms, including Linux, Macintosh, and Windows.

Packet sniffing is also referred to as tapping into the wire, which basically involves reading pieces of information traveling in a communication channel. Considerations such as placement of sniffer, protocols to be analyzed, and communication channel type need to be assessed before capturing network packets.

How Wireshark works

Wireshark collects network traffic from the wire through the computer's network interface, running in promiscuous mode (if needed), to inspect and display information related to protocols, IP addresses, ports, headers, and packet length. The following diagram is an illustration of how all the elements...