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. What is Wireshark? Portable Wireshark and available resources.
5. Wireshark GUI structure: Panes (Packet List, Details, Packet Bytes), Status Bar, and more.
6. Architecture and processing flow; limitations of visibility in Wireshark.
7. Supported protocols and dissectors.
8. Preferences and configurations; global and profile-specific settings.
9. Time values.
10. Lab exercises.

Capture traffic

1. Preliminary considerations before starting.
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, time references, time shifts, and others.
3. Understanding the Expert System.
4. Accessing options via right-click functionality.
5. Interpretation (reference patterns) and the impact of OS/driver Offload features.
6. Saving results.
7. Lab exercises and case studies.

Traffic analysis: tools and approaches (continued)

1. Filtering traffic: Display filters (preparing "in-flight" filters, macros) and following streams.
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 and UDP.
   1. Packet loss and recovery.
   2. Previous segment lost and Out-of-Order Segments events.
   3. Duplicate ACKs and Fast Retransmissions.
   4. TCP Retransmissions.
   5. Zero Window, Window changes, and other window-related issues.
4. Application Layer: HTTP and FTP.
5. Lab exercises and case studies.

Traffic analysis: common issues in network performance assessment

1. Causes of performance problems.
2. Packet loss.
3. Bandwidth issues and a 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 session.