TCP/IP Network Traffic Analysis with Wireshark Training Course

Day 1

Overview of Network Analysis

1. Essentials of the OSI reference model and TCP/IP networks.
2. Troubleshooting tools and methodologies.
3. Introduction to Wireshark
4. What is Wireshark? Portable Wireshark options. Available resources.
5. Wireshark GUI structure: Panes (Packet List, Details, Packet Bytes), Status Bar, etc.
6. Architecture and processing flow. Limitations of Wireshark visibility.
7. Supported protocols and dissectors.
8. Preferences and configurations: Global settings vs. profile-specific settings.
9. Understanding time values.
10. Lab exercises

Day 2

Capturing Traffic

1. Pre-capture considerations.
2. Promiscuous mode
3. Capture filters.
4. Automatic stop criteria
5. Remote capture techniques
6. Lab exercises

Traffic Analysis: Tools and Approaches

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

Day 3

Traffic Analysis: Tools and Approaches (continued)

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

Day 4

Traffic Analysis: Protocols

1. Data-Link Layer: Ethernet II.
2. Network Layer: IPv4.
3. Transport Layer: TCP, UDP.
   1. Packet loss and recovery mechanisms.
   2. Handling lost previous segments 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

Day 5

Traffic Analysis: Common Issues in Network Performance Assessment

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

Advanced Topics

1. Advanced filters and grouped I/O statistics.
2. Summary and Q&A session.