TCP/IP Network Traffic Analysis with Wireshark Training Course

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. Available resources.
5. Wireshark GUI layout: Panes (Packet List, Details, Packet Bytes), Status Bar, etc.
6. Architecture and data processing flow. Limitations: what and why certain data cannot be viewed in Wireshark.
7. Supported protocols and dissectors.
8. Configuration preferences: global and profile-specific settings.
9. Interpreting time values.
10. Practical lab exercises.

Capturing Traffic

1. Pre-capture considerations.
2. Promiscuous mode operation.
3. Configuring capture filters.
4. Defining automatic stop criteria.
5. Executing remote captures.
6. Practical lab exercises.

Traffic Analysis: Tools and Methodologies

1. Developing an analysis checklist.
2. Leveraging features: name resolution, colorization, marking, filtering, commenting, and time-based references.
3. Interpreting the Expert System.
4. Utilizing context menus (Right-Click) to access options.
5. Data interpretation (reference patterns) and the impact of OS/driver Offload features.
6. Exporting and saving analysis results.
7. Lab exercises and case studies.

Traffic Analysis: Tools and Methodologies (Continued)

1. Filtering traffic: Implementing Display filters (including dynamic filters and macros) and following data streams.
2. Quantitative analysis.
   1. Predefined descriptive statistics and summaries: Capture Properties, Protocol Hierarchy, Conversations, Endpoints, Packet Lengths, and IP-specific metrics.
   2. Protocol-specific analysis (e.g., TCP Stream Graphs).
   3. Advanced custom statistics using I/O Graphs.
   4. Visualizing data flows.

Traffic Analysis: Protocols

1. Data-Link Layer: Ethernet II.
2. Network Layer: IPv4.
3. Transport Layer: TCP and UDP.
   1. Packet loss detection and recovery mechanisms.
   2. Events involving lost previous segments and Out-of-Order Segments.
   3. Duplicate ACKs and Fast Retransmissions.
   4. Analyzing TCP Retransmissions.
   5. Zero Window, window adjustments, 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. Investigating packet loss.
3. Addressing bandwidth issues through a layered measurement approach.
4. Evaluating end-to-end latency and visualizing results.
5. Practical lab exercises.
6. (Wireshark) Command-line utilities:
   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.