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Network Protocol Analyzer with Wireshark
Article · March 2015
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3 authors, including:
Pradip G. Vanparia
Yogesh Ghodasara
Virani Science College
Anand Agricultural University
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Network Protocol
Analyzer with
Wireshark
Posted On March 3, 2015 by Shruthi S filed
under Enterprise
Mr. Pradip G. Vanparia , Dr. Yogesh.
R. Ghodasara and , Mr. Hitendra N.
Donga
INTRODUCTION
Wireshark is an open-source protocol analyser
designed by Gerald Combs that runs on
Windows and Unix platforms. OriginallyAdvertisement
known as Ethereal, its main objective is to
analyse traffic as well as being an excellent,
easy-to-use application for analysing communications and resolving network problems. Wireshark
implements a range of filters that facilitate the definition of search criteria and currently supports
over 1100 protocol, all with a simple and intuitive front-end that enables you to break down the
captured packets by layer.
Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer, and is the standard in many industries.
It is the continuation of a project that started in 1998. Wireshark "understands" the structure of
different networking protocols, so you are able to view the fields of each one of the headers and
layers of the packets being monitored, providing a wide range of options to net work administrators
when performing certain traffic analysis tasks. Similarly to Tcpdump, Wireshark includes a command
line version, called Tshark, although this document focuses on its graphical-front end version. It is
also important to mention that the functions detailed in this document to represent only a small
proportion of what Wireshark can do and is meant as a guide for any administrator who needs to
detect, analyse and resolve network anomalies. Situations may occur in which Wireshark is not able
to interpret certain protocols due to a lack of documentation or standardizations. However, when
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you need to analyse traffic in depth or audit an environment when time is of the essence, these
tools lack the flexibility that a protocol analyser such as Wireshark offers.
FEATURE:
Available for UNIX and Windows.
Capture live packet data from a network interface.
Display packets with very detailed protocol information.
Open and Save packet data captured.
Import and Export packet data from and to a lot of other capture programs.
Filter packets on many criteria.
Search for packets on many criteria.
Colorize packet display based on filters.
Create various statistics.
CAPTURING PACKETS
After downloading and installing Wireshark, you can launch it and click the name of an interface
under Interface List to start capturing packets on that interface. Wireshark, formerly known as
Ethereal, is an amazing Network Monitoring tool. It helps you to capture the data packets being
sent/received by your network interface and analyze it.
For example, if you want to capture traffic on the wireless network, click your wireless interface. You
can configure advanced features by clicking Capture Options, but this isn’t necessary for now.
Figure. 1. Wireshark Interface list
Before capturing packets, configure Wireshark to interface with an 802.11 client device; otherwise,
you’ll get an alert “No capture interface selected!” when starting a packet capture. To select an
interface, click the Capture menu, choose Options, and select the appropriate interface.
To start the packet capturing process, click the Capture menu and choose Start. Wireshark will
continue capturing and displaying packets until the capture buffer fills up. The buffer is 1 Mbytes by
default. This size is generally good enough, but to change it click the Capture menu, choose
Options, and adjust the Buffer size value accordingly. When you’re done capturing packets, click the
Capture menu and choose Stop.
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Alternatively, you can set the capture run length (in packets or minutes), and the capture will
automatically stop when that length has been met. You’ll be prompted to save the capture for later
viewing.
The packet capture will display the details of each packet as they were transmitted over the wireless
LAN. Figure 2 is a screenshot of a sample packet capture window. The top panel of the window
identifies each packet’s source and destination nodes, protocol implemented, and information about
each packet. You can select a specific packet to display more details. The middle panel displays
information about this packet, and you can choose a specific field of the packet and the contents of
that field are displayed in hex and ASCII format in the bottom panel. As a result, you’re able to
analyze the flow and view each field (including data field payloads) of all packets.
Figure. 2. Display Packet List Panel, Packet Details Panel, Packet Bytes Panel
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II. FILTERING PACKETS
Once you have opened the wireshark, you have to first select a particular network interface of your
machine. In most of the cases the machine is connected to only one network interface but in case
there are multiple, then select the interface on which you want to monitor the traffic. From the
menu, click on ‘Capture –> Interfaces’, which will display the following screen.
Figure.3. Wireshark Capturing Interface
Figure. 4. Filtering on the TCP protocol
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I. SOURCE IP FILTER
A source filter can be applied to restrict the packet view in wireshark to only those packets that
have source IP as mentioned in the filter. The filter applied in the example below is: ip.src ==
192.168.1.1
Figure.5. Filter Bar
II. DESTINATION IP FILTER
A destination filter can be applied to restrict the packet view in wireshark to only those packets that
have destination IP as mentioned in the filter. For example: ip.dst == 192.168.1.1
III. FILTER BY PROTOCOL
Its very easy to apply filter for a particular protocol. Just write the name of that protocol in the filter
tab and hit enter. In the example below we tried to filter the results for http protocol using this filter:
http
USING OR CONDITION IN FILTER
This filter helps filtering the packets that match either one or the other condition. Suppose, there
may arise a requirement to see packets that either have protocol ‘http’ or ‘arp’. In that case one
cannot apply separate filters. So there exists the ‘||’ filter expression that OR two conditions to
display packets matching any or both the conditions. In the example below, to filter the http or arp
packets using this filter: http||arp
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Figure.5. Wireshark Capturing Traffic using OR condition
IV. APPLYING AND CONDITION IN FILTER
This filter helps filtering packet that match exactly with multiple conditions. Suppose there is a
requirement to filter only those packets that are HTTP packets and have source ip as ’192.168.1.4′.
For Exam:. http&&ip.src==192.168.1.4
V. FILTER BY PORT NUMBER
This can be done by using the filter ‘tcp.port eq [port-no]‘. For example: tcp.port eq 80
VI. MATCH PACKETS CONTAINING A PARTICULAR
SEQUENCE
The filter syntax used in this is: ‘[prot] contains [byte sequence]‘. tcp contains 01:01:04
VII. REJECT PACKETS BASED ON SOURCE OR
DESTINATION
Filter here is ‘ip.src != [src_addr]‘ or ‘ip.dst != [dst_add]‘. ip.dst != 192.168.1.1
I n the capture menu it’s showing Source IP-address, Destination IP-address, Protocol Information
about packet and some packet information. Its lots of data. Now you need to be find out the data
your work like i want to see the HTTP packets passing from my network. So in the Filter menu i need
to be writing HTTP or click on the Filter option to find out the Filter option.
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Figure. 7. Wireshark Capturing Traffic
Select your packet and Right click on it and Select the option Follow TCP stream option.
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Figure. 7. Wireshark Capturing Traffic
It will show more awesome information about particular packet.
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Figure. 8. Follow TCP Stream
III. INSPECTING PACKETS
Click a packet to select it and you can dig down to view its details.
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Figure. 9. Wireshark Inspecting Packets
You can also create filters from here — just right-click one of the details and use the Apply as Filter
submenu to create a filter based on it.
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Figure. 10. Apply as filter
Wireshark is an extremely powerful tool, Professionals use it to debug network protocol
implementations, examine security problems and inspect network protocol internals.
IV. PROTOCOL HIERARCHY
Wireshark can provide a statistical breakdown of the contents of a packet capture. The protocol
hierarchy shows a dissection per OSI layer of the displayed data. Click on Statistics>Protocol
Hierarchy. After processing the capture file you’ll be presented with a chart outlining the protocol
statistics.
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Figure. 11. Protocol Statistics
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Figure. 12. Graph Analysis
V. IO GRAPHS AND THROUGHPUT GRAPH
The I/O graph will show you the throughput of all traffic in the trace file, in both directions. Basic
graphics can be obtained under the "IO graphs" section. Multiple graphics can be added in the
same window on a per display filter base. In our example below, we chose to draw two graphs
depending on a "tcp" and "http" display filter. Statistic=> menu=>IO Graph.
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Figure. 13. IO Graph
The TCP Stream Throughput graph will show only the throughput from one TCP stream, in one
direction, based on the selected packet. From the Statistics menu, navigate to TCP StreamGraph |
Throughput Graph.
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Figure. 14. TCP StreamGraph | Throughput Graph
REFERENCES
1. Shilpi Gupta, “Intrusion Detection System Using Wireshark” , www.ijarcsse.com, Volume 2,
Issue11,Nov-12, ISSN: 2277 128X
2. Wireshark. 2012. About Wireshark [online]. Available: http://www. wireshark.org/about. html
[accessed: 22 July 2012]
3. Shrutika Suri,” Comparative Study of Network Monitoring Tools”, http://www.ijitee.org,ISSN:
2278-3075,Volume-1,Issue-3,Aug12
4. http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~jain/cse567-06/ftp/net_perf_monitors1/index.html
5. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/tr-dojo/wireshark-makes-locating-bandwidth-issues-easy/
6. Deepak Singh Rana, “A Study and Detection of TCP SYN Flood Attacks with IP spoofing and its
7. Mitigations” http://www.ijcta.com,Vol 3(4),1476-1480,ISSN:2229-6093
8. Wireshark http://www. wireshark.org/
9. Wireshark to Capture, Filter and Inspect Packets http://www.howtogeek.com/104278/how-touse-wireshark-to-capture-filter-and-inspect-packets/
10. H. Balakrishnan, V. N. Padmanabhan, S. Seshan, M. Stemm,R. Katz, “TCP behavior of a busy
Internet server: Analysis and Improvements,” IEEE INFOCOM, San Francisco, 3/98
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Added on March 3, 2015 Comment
Comments
#1
Sushil Kumar Joshi commented on March 4, 2015 at 10:39 p.m.
As a network administrator I am using this network protocol analyzer. It really helping me to track
the network protocols.
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