Monitor Local Network Traffic TIP #7 – Monitor the Contents of a TCP Conversation The following filter rule will display only local traffic and exclude packets going to and coming from the Internet: ip.src=192.168.0.0/24 and ip.dst=192.168.0.0/24 For example, to exclude packages originating from or being directed to a given IP address, you can use: !(ip.addr = 192.168.0.10) To exclude packets not matching the filter rule, use ! and enclose the rule within parentheses.

TIP #5 – Reject Packets to Given IP Address In tips #2 and #3, || and the word or produce the same results. For example, to monitor traffic on TCP ports 80 (webserver) and 3306 (MySQL / MariaDB database server), you can use an OR condition in the capture filter: tcp.port=80||tcp.port=3306 Sometimes you will be interested in inspecting traffic that matches either (or both) conditions whatsoever. TIP #4 – Monitor Apache and MySQL Network Traffic To combine tips #2 and #3, you can use ip.addr in the filter rule instead of ip.src or ip.dst. Monitor HTTP Network Traffic to IP Address In this particular tip, we will prepend ip=192.168.0.10& to the filter stanza to monitor HTTP traffic between the local computer and 192.168.0.10: Inspect HTTP Traffic on IP Address TIP #3 – Inspect HTTP Traffic to a Given IP AddressĬlosely related with #2, in this case, we will use ip.dst as part of the capture filter as follows: ip.dst=192.168.0.10&http TIP #2 – Inspect HTTP Traffic from a Given IP Address To begin every subsequent tip, stop the live capture and edit the capture filter. Launch your browser and go to any site you wish: Inspect HTTP Network Traffic Type http in the filter box and click Apply. We will begin by illustrating capture options, whereas tips #7 through #10 will discuss how to do actually do something useful with a capture. When you hover over one of these icons, a tooltip will be displayed to indicate what it does. In the above image, we can also see the icons to list the available interfaces, to stop the current capture, and to restart it (red box on the left), and to configure and edit a filter (red box on the right). Not really useful for monitoring purposes due to the high amount of packets inspected, but it’s a start. You will start seeing all traffic passing through that interface. That said, if you are not utilizing Wireshark for personal purposes make sure your organization allows its use.įor the time being, just select eth0 from the dropdown list and click Start at the button. Capture filter – This option allows us to indicate what kind of traffic we want to monitor by port, protocol, or type.īefore we proceed with the tips, it is important to note that some organizations forbid the use of Wireshark in their networks.Network interface – As we explained before, we will only analyze packets coming through eth0, either incoming or outcoming.The most useful capture options we will consider are: Don’t click on the interface yet – we will do so later once we have reviewed a few capture options. In this article, we will use eth0, but you can choose another one if you wish. Once Wireshark is running, you can select the network interface that you want to monitor under Capture: Wireshark Network Analyzer To fix this, follow the accepted answer in this post. There is a known bug in Debian and derivatives that may prevent listing the network interfaces unless you use sudo to launch Wireshark. Although versions may differ, the options and menus should be similar – if not identical in each one. Particularly, if you are using Linux, Wireshark must be available directly from your distribution’s repositories for an easier install at your convenience. To install Wireshark, select the right installer for your operating system/architecture from. In this article, we will share 10 tips on how to use Wireshark to analyze packets in your network and hope that when you reach the Summary section you will feel inclined to add it to your bookmarks. Related Read: Best Linux Bandwidth Monitoring Tools to Analyze Network Usage

On top of this, Wireshark allows you to not only monitor traffic in real-time but also to save it to a file for later inspection. To do this, they rely on software programs called network packet analyzers, with Wireshark perhaps being the most popular and used due to its versatility and easiness of use. It is the responsibility of network engineers and system administrators alike to monitor and inspect the packets for security and troubleshooting purposes. In any packet-switched network, packets represent units of data that are transmitted between computers.

Wireshark sniffing tool