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

Discovering the Statistics menu

Within Wireshark, there are several ways to view data. Some of the data can be viewed in a numeric way, and some can provide a visual, in the form of a graphic. The Statistics menu has several ways to assess the health of your devices and network.

To view all of the choices, drop down the Statistics menu, as shown here:

Figure 19.1 – The Statistics menu

In this section, we'll highlight some of the key features of the Statistics menu. We'll first take a look at general statistics and then move to ways we can evaluate protocol effectiveness. We'll then summarize by covering the different ways we can graph and visualize issues within a capture.

To follow along with a few examples, we will use bigFlows.pcap. To get a copy of the file, go to http://tcpreplay.appneta.com/wiki/captures.html#bigflows-pcap. Once there, download and open bigFlows.pcap in Wireshark.

Viewing general information

Within...