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

Summary

In this chapter, we took a brief look at the Wireshark interface. We learned how you can quickly begin capturing by clicking on a sparkline, easily add columns to the interface, and use the intelligent scrollbar coloring to identify trouble spots. You can now appreciate how each new version of Wireshark improves with the help of the many developers constantly updating the software. We also covered where you can find keyboard shortcuts and additional information.

We then explored the phases of packet capture, from gathering network traffic to processing it into a human-readable format for analysis. Finally, we saw how because Wireshark can be resource-intensive, it’s sometimes better to use a CLI tool such as tshark, a lightweight application for capturing packets.

In the next chapter, we will explore downloading and installing Wireshark on various operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. We’ll then take the time to explore the different capture...