TCP/IP Network Traffic Analysis with Wireshark Training Course

Network analysis overview

1. Essentials of the OSI reference model and TCP/IP networks.
2. Troubleshooting tools and methodologies.
3. Introduction to Wireshark
4. Overview of Wireshark, Portable Wireshark, and related resources.
5. Wireshark GUI structure: Panes (Packet List, Details, Packet Bytes), Status Bar, and more.
6. Architecture and processing flow; understanding what cannot be seen with Wireshark and why.
7. Supported protocols and dissectors.
8. Preferences and configurations; both global and profile-specific settings.
9. Understanding time values.
10. Lab exercises.

Capture traffic

1. Considerations before starting a capture.
2. Promiscuous mode.
3. Capture filters.
4. Automatic stop criteria.
5. Remote capture.
6. Lab exercises.

Traffic analysis: tools and approaches

1. Analysis checklist.
2. Utilizing features: name resolution, colorization, marking, ignoring, commenting, and using time references and shifts.
3. Understanding the Expert System.
4. Accessing options via Right-Click functionality.
5. Interpretation of reference patterns and the impact of OS/driver Offload features.
6. Saving analysis results.
7. Lab exercises and case studies.

Traffic analysis: tools and approaches (cont.)

1. Filtering traffic: Display filters (preparing "in-flight" filters, macros), and following a stream.
2. Quantitative analysis.
   1. Basic predefined descriptive statistics and summaries: Capture Properties, Protocol Hierarchy, Conversations, Endpoints, Packet Lengths, and IP-specific data.
   2. Protocol-specific analysis (e.g., TCP Stream Graphs).
   3. Advanced custom statistics using I/O Graph.
   4. Flow visualization.

Traffic analysis: protocols

1. Data-Link Layer: Ethernet II.
2. Network Layer: IPv4.
3. Transport Layer: TCP, UDP.
   1. Packet loss and recovery.
   2. Events related to previous segment loss and Out-of-Order Segments.
   3. Duplicate ACKs and Fast Retransmissions.
   4. TCP Retransmissions.
   5. Zero Window, Window changes, and other window-related issues.
4. Application layer: HTTP, FTP.
5. Lab exercises and case studies.

Traffic analysis: common issues in network performance assessment

1. Root causes of performance problems.
2. Packet loss.
3. Bandwidth issues and the layered approach to measurement.
4. Latency: assessing end-to-end latency and visualization.
5. Lab exercises.
6. (Wireshark) command-line tools:
   1. tshark (terminal-based wireshark) / dumpcap / rawshark, and tcpdump
   2. editcap, mergecap, capinfos, and text2pcap.

Advanced topics

1. Advanced filters and grouped iostats.
2. Summary and Q&A.