TCP/IP Network Traffic Analysis with Wireshark Training Course

Network Analysis Overview

1. Essentials of the OSI reference model and TCP/IP networks.
2. Overview of troubleshooting tools and methodologies.
3. Introduction to Wireshark.
4. Understanding Wireshark: Portable versions and available resources.
5. Wireshark GUI layout: Panes (Packet List, Details, Packet Bytes), Status Bar, and more.
6. Architecture and data processing flow; understanding limitations (what cannot be seen with Wireshark).
7. Supported protocols and dissectors.
8. Managing preferences and configurations: global vs. profile-specific settings.
9. Interpreting time values.
10. Practical lab exercises.

Capturing Traffic

1. Pre-capture considerations.
2. Promiscuous mode.
3. Implementing capture filters.
4. Setting automatic stop criteria.
5. Remote capture techniques.
6. Practical lab exercises.

Traffic Analysis: Tools and Approaches

1. Developing an analysis checklist.
2. Leveraging features: name resolution, colorization, marking, ignoring, commenting, and utilizing time references and shifts.
3. Understanding the Expert System.
4. Accessing options via Right-Click functionality.
5. Interpretation strategies (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 (Continued)

1. Filtering traffic: Using Display filters (preparing "in-flight" filters, macros) and following streams.
2. Quantitative analysis.
   1. Reviewing 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 Graphs.
   4. Flow visualization techniques.

Traffic Analysis: Protocols

1. Data-Link Layer: Ethernet II.
2. Network Layer: IPv4.
3. Transport Layer: TCP and UDP.
   1. Packet loss and recovery mechanisms.
   2. Handling Previous Segment Lost and Out-of-Order Segments events.
   3. Duplicate ACKs and Fast Retransmissions.
   4. Analyzing 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. Identifying root causes of performance degradation.
2. Analyzing packet loss.
3. Bandwidth issues and the layered approach to measurement.
4. Latency: Assessing end-to-end latency and visualization methods.
5. Practical lab exercises.
6. Utilizing (Wireshark) command-line tools:
   1. tshark (terminal-based Wireshark), dumpcap, rawshark, and tcpdump.
   2. editcap, mergecap, capinfos, and text2pcap.

Advanced Topics

1. Advanced filtering techniques and grouped I/O statistics.
2. Course summary and Q&A session.