Review: Practical Packet Analysis

Full Title: Practical Packet Analysis: Using Wireshark to Solve Real - World Network Problems
Edition: Second
Published: 2011
Author: Chris Sanders
Pages: 255
Publisher: No Starch Press

Synopsis:
Whether you are just starting out, or are more advanced, if you need to understand what is on your network, this book should be on your bookshelf. Chris Sanders has found a way to start from the first principles necessary to perform and understand packet analysis, while at the same time providing a book which is useful to the more advanced. The writing style is very easy to read and very logically organized. Figures are used on nearly every page and real life scenarios are woven throughout the text, reinforcing the material wonderfully.

The book is divided into 11 chapters divided roughly into a beginner, intermediate, and advanced sections.

The first four chapters are aimed at the beginner who is not very familiar with Wireshark.

The first chapter provides the basics of networking and packet analysis.

The second chapter delves into the basics of sniffing and sniffer placement.

Chapter three goes into a brief history of Wireshark, installing Wireshark and how to capture and read Wireshark packet captures.

In chapter four the basics of working with the Wireshark features are covered, including saving, exporting and merging capture files as well as capture options and filtering captures.

Chapters five to eight cover more advanced material.

In chapter five some of the additional Wireshark features are covered, including how to use the protocol dissectors, following TCP streams, and graphing.

Chapter six looks into some of the common lower layer protocols and how they look in Wireshark.

Chapter seven repeats the same exercise with some higher level protocols like HTTP, DNS, and DHCP.

Chapter eight is my favorite section, walking through some real world packet analysis scenarios.

Chapters nine through eleven present even more advanced material, including troubleshooting network issues, using Wireshark for security analysis and analyzing wireless packets.

Summary:
This is a very good book for the beginning or novice network analyst and an excellent reference for the more advanced analyst. If you use or are hoping to use Wireshark this book will be a useful addition to your bookshelf.