

With Wireshark started let’s start with something simple. A very important protocol in this list you will see the protocol and info tries to describe in more or less plain English what is going on with the protocol. The destination – where it’s going to – the IP address. Under here you will see the source IP address. It is not only used for understanding network, but it can be used to diagnose network problems.īefore we get started in applying Wireshark, let’s just take a quick overview of the types of things you’ll be seeing. It is easy to use with color coded packets. Wireshark is a free application that is very common in industry. When the local area network communication takes place based on a physical address, not an IP address. ARP finds the physical address of a device based on its IP address. For example, if you Ping you will get a response. It only works if the destination device responds to the IC and P packets. Ping tests for connectivity between devices. IC and P provides network communication with a variety of messages including errors. TCP and UDP are called transport protocol, but we will look at the lower level protocols too. It is also used for DNS, because the packets are so small that if a packet is lost then another DNS request will be made. It is used for video, where speed is more important than making sure every packet is received. UDP is known as an unreliable protocol, because there are no acknowledgements. TCP is used for web pages, email and file transfers.

TCP is known as a reliable protocol, because it sets up a connection between two computers using a three wing handshake and acknowledges the packets received. The main ones are ARP, ICMP, TCP and UDP. We are going to focus on the network protocols and how they are used. There are other protocols such as FTP, which is used for file transfers. DNS is used by browsers and utilities such as Ping, when the computer needs to convert a host name, such as between IP address, which is needed for communication. There are network protocols such as HTTP for web communication. There are many protocols used in networking, but we are just going to focus on a few important ones. Just as when you hear the phone ring, the typical protocol is to answer it and say hello. Certain situations require specific protocols. You will see how packets are captured on a network so you can better understand network protocols.
