Book Image

Learn Wireshark, - Second Edition

By : Lisa Bock
5 (1)
Book Image

Learn Wireshark, - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Lisa Bock

Overview of this book

Wireshark is a popular and powerful packet analysis tool that helps network administrators investigate latency issues and potential attacks. Over the years, there have been many enhancements to Wireshark’s functionality. This book will guide you through essential features so you can capture, display, and filter data with ease. In addition to this, you’ll gain valuable tips on lesser-known configuration options, which will allow you to complete your analysis in an environment customized to suit your needs. This updated second edition of Learn Wireshark starts by outlining the benefits of traffic analysis. You’ll discover the process of installing Wireshark and become more familiar with the interface. Next, you’ll focus on the Internet Suite and then explore deep packet analysis of common protocols such as DNS, DHCP, HTTP, and ARP. The book also guides you through working with the expert system to detect network latency issues, create I/O and stream graphs, subset traffic, and save and export captures. Finally, you’ll understand how to share captures using CloudShark, a browser-based solution for analyzing packet captures. By the end of this Wireshark book, you’ll have the skills and hands-on experience you need to conduct deep packet analysis of common protocols and network troubleshooting as well as identify security issues.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1 Traffic Capture Overview
6
Part 2 Getting Started with Wireshark
11
Part 3 The Internet Suite TCP/IP
16
Part 4 Deep Packet Analysis of Common Protocols
21
Part 5 Working with Packet Captures

Chapter 15: Decoding HTTP

At some point, most of us have accessed a web page to download information. But just what's involved when retrieving a web page? In this chapter, we'll take a closer look at the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). We'll start with an overview and review some of the objects and elements that we can obtain when requesting content. We'll then compare the available HTTP versions, 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0, along with the methods used, such as GET, POST, and HEAD. HTTP has three versions, each with a default method to establish and maintain a connection. So that you understand the mechanics of the different methods, we'll compare the differences between a non-persistent and persistent connection.

HTTP is a stateless protocol. You'll learn how HTTP uses cookies to maintain state by keeping track of the details of each transaction. To help you troubleshoot a web connection, we'll review what takes place during a transaction and examine...