TECH STUFF

What is Wireshark?

November 14, 2020
VINAY CHANDEL
Wireshark is a free and open source network protocol analyzer that enables users to interactively browse the data traffic on a computer network. The development project was started under the name Ethereal, but was renamed Wireshark in 2006.
Many networking developers from all around the world have contributed to this project with network analysis, troubleshooting, software development and communication protocols. Wireshark is used in many educational institutions and other industrial sectors.

Features of Wireshark include:

  • Data is analyzed either from the wire over the network connection or from data files that have already captured data packets.
  • Supports live data reading and analysis for a wide range of networks (including Ethernet, IEEE 802.11, point-to-point Protocol (PPP) and loopback).
  • With the help of GUI or other versions, users can browse captured data networks.
  • For programmatically editing and converting the captured files to the editcap application, users can use command line switches.
  • Display filters are used to filter and organize the data display.
  • When using Linux, it is also possible to capture raw USB traffic
  • New protocols can be scrutinized by creating plug-ins.
  • Captured traffic can also trace Voice over Internet (VoIP) calls over the network.

Steps to capture HTTP traffic using Wireshark:

  1. Install Wireshark.
  2. Open your Internet browser.
  3. Clear your browser cache.
  4. Open Wireshark
  5. Click on “Capture > Interfaces”. A pop up window will show up.
  6. You probably want to capture traffic that goes through your ethernet driver. Click on the Start button to start capturing traffic via this interface.
  7. Visit the URL that you wanted to capture the traffic from.
  8. Go back to your Wireshark screen and press Ctrl + E to stop capturing.
  9. After the traffic capture is stopped, please save the captured traffic into a *.pcap format file and attach it to your support ticket.

Some courses to learn about Wireshark:

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