Wireshark Wireshark - 2.5 User Guide
Wireshark User’s Guide
For Wireshark 2.5
Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping[AT]web.de>
Richard Sharpe, NS Computer Software and
Services P/L <rsharpe[AT]ns.aus.com>
Ed Warnicke <hagbard[AT]physics.rutgers.edu>
Wireshark User’s Guide: For Wireshark 2.5
by Ulf Lamping, Richard Sharpe, and Ed Warnicke
Copyright © 2004-2014 Ulf Lamping, Richard Sharpe, Ed Warnicke
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 or any later
version published by the Free Software Foundation.
All logos and trademarks in this document are property of their respective owner.
Preface ............................................................................................................................. ix
1. Foreword ............................................................................................................... ix
2. Who should read this document? ............................................................................... ix
3. Acknowledgements ................................................................................................. ix
4. About this document ................................................................................................ x
5. Where to get the latest copy of this document? ............................................................. x
6. Providing feedback about this document ...................................................................... x
7. Typographic Conventions .......................................................................................... x
7.1. Admonitions ................................................................................................. x
7.2. Shell Prompt and Source Code Examples ......................................................... xi
1. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1
1.1. What is Wireshark? ............................................................................................... 1
1.1.1. Some intended purposes .............................................................................. 1
1.1.2. Features .................................................................................................... 1
1.1.3. Live capture from many different network media ............................................. 2
1.1.4. Import files from many other capture programs ................................................ 2
1.1.5. Export files for many other capture programs .................................................. 2
1.1.6. Many protocol dissectors ............................................................................. 2
1.1.7. Open Source Software ................................................................................. 3
1.1.8. What Wireshark is not ................................................................................. 3
1.2. System Requirements ............................................................................................. 3
1.2.1. Microsoft Windows .................................................................................... 3
1.2.2. UNIX / Linux ............................................................................................ 4
1.3. Where to get Wireshark ......................................................................................... 4
1.4. A brief history of Wireshark ................................................................................... 5
1.5. Development and maintenance of Wireshark .............................................................. 5
1.6. Reporting problems and getting help ........................................................................ 6
1.6.1. Website ..................................................................................................... 6
1.6.2. Wiki ......................................................................................................... 6
1.6.3. Q&A Site .................................................................................................. 6
1.6.4. FAQ ......................................................................................................... 6
1.6.5. Mailing Lists ............................................................................................. 7
1.6.6. Reporting Problems .................................................................................... 7
1.6.7. Reporting Crashes on UNIX/Linux platforms .................................................. 8
1.6.8. Reporting Crashes on Windows platforms ....................................................... 8
2. Building and Installing Wireshark ...................................................................................... 9
2.1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 9
2.2. Obtaining the source and binary distributions ............................................................. 9
2.3. Installing Wireshark under Windows ........................................................................ 9
2.3.1. Installation Components ............................................................................. 10
2.3.2. Additional Tasks ....................................................................................... 10
2.3.3. Install Location ......................................................................................... 10
2.3.4. Installing WinPcap .................................................................................... 11
2.3.5. Windows installer command line options ...................................................... 11
2.3.6. Manual WinPcap Installation ...................................................................... 11
2.3.7. Update Wireshark ..................................................................................... 11
2.3.8. Update WinPcap ....................................................................................... 12
2.3.9. Uninstall Wireshark ................................................................................... 12
2.3.10. Uninstall WinPcap ................................................................................... 12
2.4. Installing Wireshark under macOS ......................................................................... 12
2.5. Building Wireshark from source under UNIX ........................................................... 12
2.6. Installing the binaries under UNIX ......................................................................... 13
2.6.1. Installing from RPM’s under Red Hat and alike ............................................. 13
2.6.2. Installing from deb’s under Debian, Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives ............ 13
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2.6.3. Installing from portage under Gentoo Linux ................................................... 14
2.6.4. Installing from packages under FreeBSD ....................................................... 14
2.7. Troubleshooting during the install on Unix .............................................................. 14
2.8. Building from source under Windows ..................................................................... 14
3. User Interface ............................................................................................................... 15
3.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 15
3.2. Start Wireshark ................................................................................................... 15
3.3. The Main window ............................................................................................... 15
3.3.1. Main Window Navigation .......................................................................... 17
3.4. The Menu .......................................................................................................... 17
3.5. The “File” menu ................................................................................................. 19
3.6. The “Edit” menu ................................................................................................. 21
3.7. The “View” menu ............................................................................................... 23
3.8. The “Go” menu .................................................................................................. 26
3.9. The “Capture” menu ............................................................................................ 28
3.10. The “Analyze” menu .......................................................................................... 29
3.11. The “Statistics” menu ......................................................................................... 31
3.12. The “Telephony” menu ....................................................................................... 32
3.13. The “Tools” menu ............................................................................................. 34
3.14. The “Internals” menu ......................................................................................... 35
3.15. The “Help” menu .............................................................................................. 35
3.16. The “Main” toolbar ............................................................................................ 37
3.17. The “Filter” toolbar ............................................................................................ 39
3.18. The “Packet List” pane ....................................................................................... 40
3.19. The “Packet Details” pane ................................................................................... 42
3.20. The “Packet Bytes” pane .................................................................................... 42
3.21. The Statusbar .................................................................................................... 43
4. Capturing Live Network Data .......................................................................................... 45
4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 45
4.2. Prerequisites ....................................................................................................... 45
4.3. Start Capturing .................................................................................................... 45
4.4. The “Capture Interfaces” dialog box ....................................................................... 46
4.5. The “Capture Options” dialog box .......................................................................... 47
4.5.1. Capture frame .......................................................................................... 48
4.5.2. Capture File(s) frame ................................................................................. 49
4.5.3. Stop Capture… frame ................................................................................ 50
4.5.4. Display Options frame ............................................................................... 50
4.5.5. Name Resolution frame ............................................................................. 50
4.5.6. Buttons ................................................................................................... 51
4.6. The “Edit Interface Settings” dialog box .................................................................. 51
4.7. The “Compile Results” dialog box ......................................................................... 52
4.8. The “Add New Interfaces” dialog box .................................................................... 53
4.8.1. Add or remove pipes ................................................................................. 54
4.8.2. Add or hide local interfaces ........................................................................ 54
4.8.3. Add or hide remote interfaces ..................................................................... 55
4.9. The “Remote Capture Interfaces” dialog box ............................................................ 55
4.9.1. Remote Capture Interfaces .......................................................................... 56
4.9.2. Remote Capture Settings ............................................................................ 56
4.10. The “Interface Details” dialog box ........................................................................ 57
4.11. Capture files and file modes ................................................................................ 58
4.12. Link-layer header type ........................................................................................ 60
4.13. Filtering while capturing ..................................................................................... 60
4.13.1. Automatic Remote Traffic Filtering ............................................................ 62
4.13.2. Stop the running capture ........................................................................... 62
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4.13.3. Restart a running capture .......................................................................... 63
5. File Input, Output, and Printing ........................................................................................ 64
5.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 64
5.2. Open capture files ............................................................................................... 64
5.2.1. The “Open Capture File” dialog box ............................................................ 64
5.2.2. Input File Formats .................................................................................... 66
5.3. Saving captured packets ....................................................................................... 68
5.3.1. The “Save Capture File As” dialog box ........................................................ 68
5.3.2. Output File Formats .................................................................................. 70
5.4. Merging capture files ........................................................................................... 71
5.4.1. The “Merge with Capture File” dialog box .................................................... 71
5.5. Import hex dump ................................................................................................. 73
5.5.1. The “Import from Hex Dump” dialog box ..................................................... 73
5.6. File Sets ............................................................................................................ 75
5.6.1. The “List Files” dialog box ........................................................................ 76
5.7. Exporting data .................................................................................................... 77
5.7.1. The “Export as Plain Text File” dialog box ................................................... 77
5.7.2. The “Export as PostScript File” dialog box .................................................... 79
5.7.3. The "Export as CSV (Comma Separated Values) File" dialog box ...................... 79
5.7.4. The "Export as C Arrays (packet bytes) file" dialog box ................................... 79
5.7.5. The "Export as PSML File" dialog box ......................................................... 80
5.7.6. The "Export as PDML File" dialog box ........................................................ 80
5.7.7. The "Export selected packet bytes" dialog box ............................................... 81
5.7.8. The "Export Objects" dialog box ................................................................. 82
5.8. Printing packets .................................................................................................. 83
5.8.1. The “Print” dialog box ............................................................................... 84
5.9. The “Packet Range” frame .................................................................................... 85
5.10. The Packet Format frame .................................................................................... 85
6. Working with captured packets ........................................................................................ 87
6.1. Viewing packets you have captured ........................................................................ 87
6.2. Pop-up menus ..................................................................................................... 88
6.2.1. Pop-up menu of the “Packet List” column header ........................................... 89
6.2.2. Pop-up menu of the “Packet List” pane ......................................................... 90
6.2.3. Pop-up menu of the “Packet Details” pane .................................................... 92
6.3. Filtering packets while viewing .............................................................................. 94
6.4. Building display filter expressions .......................................................................... 96
6.4.1. Display filter fields ................................................................................... 96
6.4.2. Comparing values ..................................................................................... 96
6.4.3. Combining expressions .............................................................................. 98
6.4.4. Substring Operator .................................................................................... 98
6.4.5. Membership Operator. ............................................................................... 99
6.4.6. A Common Mistake .................................................................................. 99
6.5. The “Filter Expression” dialog box ......................................................................... 99
6.6. Defining and saving filters .................................................................................. 101
6.7. Defining and saving filter macros ......................................................................... 102
6.8. Finding packets ................................................................................................. 102
6.8.1. The “Find Packet” dialog box ................................................................... 103
6.8.2. The “Find Next” command ....................................................................... 104
6.8.3. The “Find Previous” command .................................................................. 104
6.9. Go to a specific packet ....................................................................................... 104
6.9.1. The “Go Back” command ......................................................................... 104
6.9.2. The “Go Forward” command .................................................................... 104
6.9.3. The “Go to Packet” dialog box .................................................................. 104
6.9.4. The “Go to Corresponding Packet” command ............................................... 104
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6.9.5. The “Go to First Packet” command ............................................................ 104
6.9.6. The “Go to Last Packet” command ............................................................ 105
6.10. Marking packets .............................................................................................. 105
6.11. Ignoring packets .............................................................................................. 105
6.12. Time display formats and time references ............................................................. 105
6.12.1. Packet time referencing .......................................................................... 106
7. Advanced Topics ......................................................................................................... 108
7.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 108
7.2. Following TCP streams ...................................................................................... 108
7.2.1. The “Follow TCP Stream” dialog box ......................................................... 108
7.3. Show Packet Bytes ............................................................................................ 109
7.3.1. Decode as .............................................................................................. 110
7.3.2. Show as ................................................................................................. 110
7.4. Expert Information ............................................................................................. 110
7.4.1. Expert Info Entries .................................................................................. 111
7.4.2. “Expert Info” dialog ................................................................................ 112
7.4.3. “Colorized” Protocol Details Tree .............................................................. 113
7.4.4. “Expert” Packet List Column (optional) ...................................................... 113
7.5. TCP Analysis .................................................................................................... 113
7.6. Time Stamps ..................................................................................................... 117
7.6.1. Wireshark internals .................................................................................. 117
7.6.2. Capture file formats ................................................................................. 118
7.6.3. Accuracy ............................................................................................... 118
7.7. Time Zones ...................................................................................................... 118
7.7.1. Set your computer’s time correctly! ............................................................ 119
7.7.2. Wireshark and Time Zones ....................................................................... 120
7.8. Packet Reassembly ............................................................................................. 121
7.8.1. What is it? ............................................................................................. 121
7.8.2. How Wireshark handles it ......................................................................... 121
7.9. Name Resolution ............................................................................................... 122
7.9.1. Name Resolution drawbacks ..................................................................... 122
7.9.2. Ethernet name resolution (MAC layer) ........................................................ 123
7.9.3. IP name resolution (network layer) ............................................................. 123
7.9.4. TCP/UDP port name resolution (transport layer) ........................................... 123
7.9.5. VLAN ID resolution ................................................................................ 123
7.10. Checksums ...................................................................................................... 124
7.10.1. Wireshark checksum validation ................................................................ 124
7.10.2. Checksum offloading ............................................................................. 124
8. Statistics ..................................................................................................................... 126
8.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 126
8.2. The “Summary” window ..................................................................................... 126
8.3. The “Protocol Hierarchy” window ........................................................................ 128
8.4. Conversations .................................................................................................... 129
8.4.1. The “Conversations” window .................................................................... 129
8.5. Endpoints ......................................................................................................... 130
8.5.1. The “Endpoints” window .......................................................................... 131
8.6. The “IO Graphs” window ................................................................................... 132
8.7. Service Response Time ....................................................................................... 133
8.7.1. The "Service Response Time DCE-RPC" window ......................................... 134
8.8. Compare two capture files ................................................................................... 135
8.9. WLAN Traffic Statistics ..................................................................................... 136
8.10. The protocol specific statistics windows ............................................................... 137
9. Telephony ................................................................................................................... 138
9.1. Introduction ...................................................................................................... 138
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9.2. RTP Analysis .................................................................................................... 138
9.3. IAX2 Analysis .................................................................................................. 138
9.4. VoIP Calls ........................................................................................................ 139
9.5. LTE MAC Traffic Statistics ................................................................................ 139
9.6. LTE RLC Traffic Statistics .................................................................................. 139
9.7. The protocol specific statistics windows ................................................................ 140
10. Customizing Wireshark ............................................................................................... 141
10.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 141
10.2. Start Wireshark from the command line ............................................................... 141
10.3. Packet colorization ........................................................................................... 147
10.4. Control Protocol dissection ................................................................................ 149
10.4.1. The “Enabled Protocols” dialog box .......................................................... 149
10.4.2. User Specified Decodes .......................................................................... 151
10.4.3. Show User Specified Decodes ................................................................. 152
10.5. Preferences ..................................................................................................... 152
10.5.1. Interface Options ................................................................................... 153
10.6. Configuration Profiles ....................................................................................... 154
10.7. User Table ...................................................................................................... 156
10.8. Display Filter Macros ....................................................................................... 156
10.9. ESS Category Attributes .................................................................................... 156
10.10. GeoIP Database Paths ..................................................................................... 157
10.11. IKEv2 decryption table .................................................................................... 157
10.12. Object Identifiers ............................................................................................ 158
10.13. PRES Users Context List ................................................................................. 158
10.14. SCCP users Table ........................................................................................... 159
10.15. SMI (MIB and PIB) Modules ........................................................................... 159
10.16. SMI (MIB and PIB) Paths ............................................................................... 159
10.17. SNMP Enterprise Specific Trap Types ............................................................... 159
10.18. SNMP users Table .......................................................................................... 159
10.19. Tektronix K12xx/15 RF5 protocols Table ........................................................... 160
10.20. User DLTs protocol table ................................................................................ 160
A. Wireshark Messages .................................................................................................... 162
A.1. Packet List Messages ......................................................................................... 162
A.1.1. [Malformed Packet] ................................................................................ 162
A.1.2. [Packet size limited during capture] ........................................................... 162
A.2. Packet Details Messages .................................................................................... 162
A.2.1. [Response in frame: 123] ......................................................................... 162
A.2.2. [Request in frame: 123] ........................................................................... 163
A.2.3. [Time from request: 0.123 seconds] ........................................................... 163
A.2.4. [Stream setup by PROTOCOL (frame 123)] ................................................ 163
B. Files and Folders ......................................................................................................... 164
B.1. Capture Files .................................................................................................... 164
B.1.1. Libpcap File Contents ............................................................................. 164
B.1.2. Not Saved in the Capture File ................................................................... 164
B.2. Configuration File and Plugin Folders ................................................................... 165
B.2.1. Folders on Windows ............................................................................... 165
B.2.2. Folders on Unix-like systems .................................................................... 165
B.3. Configuration Files ............................................................................................ 165
B.4. Plugin folders ................................................................................................... 169
B.5. Windows folders ............................................................................................... 170
B.5.1. Windows profiles .................................................................................... 170
B.5.2. Windows roaming profiles ....................................................................... 170
B.5.3. Windows temporary folder ....................................................................... 171
C. Protocols and Protocol Fields ........................................................................................ 172
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D. Related command line tools .......................................................................................... 173
D.1. Introduction ..................................................................................................... 173
D.2. tshark: Terminal-based Wireshark ........................................................................ 173
D.3. tcpdump: Capturing with tcpdump for viewing with Wireshark ................................ 175
D.4. dumpcap: Capturing with dumpcap for viewing with Wireshark ............................... 175
D.5. capinfos: Print information about capture files ........................................................ 176
D.6. rawshark: Dump and analyze network traffic. ........................................................ 177
D.7. editcap: Edit capture files ................................................................................... 178
D.8. mergecap: Merging multiple capture files into one .................................................. 183
D.9. text2pcap: Converting ASCII hexdumps to network captures ..................................... 184
D.10. reordercap: Reorder a capture file ...................................................................... 187
11. This Document’s License (GPL) ................................................................................... 188
viii
Preface
1. Foreword
Wireshark is one of those programs that many network managers would love to be able to use, but they are
often prevented from getting what they would like from Wireshark because of the lack of documentation.
This document is part of an effort by the Wireshark team to improve the usability of Wireshark.
We hope that you find it useful and look forward to your comments.
2. Who should read this document?
The intended audience of this book is anyone using Wireshark.
This book will explain all the basics and also some of the advanced features that Wireshark provides. As
Wireshark has become a very complex program since the early days, not every feature of Wireshark may
be explained in this book.
This book is not intended to explain network sniffing in general and it will not provide details about specific
network protocols. A lot of useful information regarding these topics can be found at the Wireshark Wiki
at https://wiki.wireshark.org/.
By reading this book, you will learn how to install Wireshark, how to use the basic elements of the graphical
user interface (such as the menu) and what’s behind some of the advanced features that are not always
obvious at first sight. It will hopefully guide you around some common problems that frequently appear
for new (and sometimes even advanced) users of Wireshark.
3. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the whole Wireshark team for their assistance. In particular, the authors
would like to thank:
• Gerald Combs, for initiating the Wireshark project and funding to do this documentation.
• Guy Harris, for many helpful hints and a great deal of patience in reviewing this document.
• Gilbert Ramirez, for general encouragement and helpful hints along the way.
The authors would also like to thank the following people for their helpful feedback on this document:
• Pat Eyler, for his suggestions on improving the example on generating a backtrace.
• Martin Regner, for his various suggestions and corrections.
• Graeme Hewson, for a lot of grammatical corrections.
The authors would like to acknowledge those man page and README authors for the Wireshark project
from who sections of this document borrow heavily:
• Scott Renfro from whose mergecap man page Section D.8, “mergecap: Merging multiple capture
files into one” is derived.
• Ashok Narayanan from whose text2pcap man page Section D.9, “text2pcap: Converting ASCII
hexdumps to network captures” is derived.
ix
Preface
4. About this document
This book was originally developed by Richard Sharpe with funds provided from the Wireshark Fund. It
was updated by Ed Warnicke and more recently redesigned and updated by Ulf Lamping.
It was originally written in DocBook/XML and converted to AsciiDoc by Gerald Combs.
5. Where to get the latest copy of this document?
The latest copy of this documentation can always be found at https://www.wireshark.org/docs/.
6. Providing feedback about this document
Should you have any feedback about this document, please send it to the authors through wireshark-
dev[AT]wireshark.org.
7. Typographic Conventions
The following table shows the typographic conventions that are used in this guide.
Table 1. Typographic Conventions
Style Description Example
Italic File names, folder names, and extensions C:\Development\wireshark.
Monospace Commands, flags, and environment
variables
Bold
Monospace
Button Dialog and window buttons Press Launch to go to the Moon.
Key Keyboard shortcut Press Ctrl+Down to move to the next
Menu Menu item
Commands that should be run by the user Run cmake -G Ninja ...
7.1. Admonitions
Important and notable items are marked as follows:
This is a warning
CMake’s -G option.
packet.
Select Go → Next Packet to move to the
next packet.
You should pay attention to a warning, otherwise data loss might occur.
This is a note
A note will point you to common mistakes and things that might not be obvious.
x
Preface
This is a tip
Tips are helpful for your everyday work using Wireshark.
7.2. Shell Prompt and Source Code Examples
Bourne shell, normal user.
$ # This is a comment
$ git config --global log.abbrevcommit true
Bourne shell, root user.
# # This is a comment
# ninja install
Command Prompt (cmd.exe).
>rem This is a comment
>cd C:\Development
PowerShell.
PS$># This is a comment
PS$>choco list -l
C Source Code.
#include "config.h"
/* This method dissects foos */
static int
dissect_foo_message(tvbuff_t *tvb, packet_info *pinfo _U_, proto_tree *tree _U_, void
*data _U_)
{
/* TODO: implement your dissecting code */
return tvb_captured_length(tvb);
}
xi
Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1. What is Wireshark?
Wireshark is a network packet analyzer. A network packet analyzer will try to capture network packets
and tries to display that packet data as detailed as possible.
You could think of a network packet analyzer as a measuring device used to examine what’s going on
inside a network cable, just like a voltmeter is used by an electrician to examine what’s going on inside
an electric cable (but at a higher level, of course).
In the past, such tools were either very expensive, proprietary, or both. However, with the advent of
Wireshark, all that has changed.
Wireshark is perhaps one of the best open source packet analyzers available today.
1.1.1. Some intended purposes
Here are some examples people use Wireshark for:
• Network administrators use it to troubleshoot network problems
• Network security engineers use it to examine security problems
• Developers use it to debug protocol implementations
• People use it to learn network protocol internals
Beside these examples Wireshark can be helpful in many other situations too.
1.1.2. Features
The following are some of the many features Wireshark provides:
• Available for UNIX and Windows.
• Capture live packet data from a network interface.
• Open files containing packet data captured with tcpdump/WinDump, Wireshark, and a number of other
packet capture programs.
• Import packets from text files containing hex dumps of packet data.
• Display packets with very detailed protocol information.
• Save packet data captured.
• Export some or all packets in a number of capture file formats.
• Filter packets on many criteria.
• Search for packets on many criteria.
• Colorize packet display based on filters.
• Create various statistics.
1
Introduction
• …and a lot more!
However, to really appreciate its power you have to start using it.
Figure 1.1, “Wireshark captures packets and lets you examine their contents.” shows Wireshark having
captured some packets and waiting for you to examine them.
Figure 1.1. Wireshark captures packets and lets you examine their contents.
1.1.3. Live capture from many different network media
Wireshark can capture traffic from many different network media types - and despite its name - including
wireless LAN as well. Which media types are supported, depends on many things like the operating system
you are using. An overview of the supported media types can be found at https://wiki.wireshark.org/
CaptureSetup/NetworkMedia.
1.1.4. Import files from many other capture programs
Wireshark can open packets captured from a large number of other capture programs. For a list of input
formats see Section 5.2.2, “Input File Formats”.
1.1.5. Export files for many other capture programs
Wireshark can save packets captured in a large number of formats of other capture programs. For a list of
output formats see Section 5.3.2, “Output File Formats”.
1.1.6. Many protocol dissectors
There are protocol dissectors (or decoders, as they are known in other products) for a great many protocols:
see Appendix C, Protocols and Protocol Fields.
2
Introduction
1.1.7. Open Source Software
Wireshark is an open source software project, and is released under the GNU General Public License
(GPL). You can freely use Wireshark on any number of computers you like, without worrying about license
keys or fees or such. In addition, all source code is freely available under the GPL. Because of that, it is
very easy for people to add new protocols to Wireshark, either as plugins, or built into the source, and
they often do!
1.1.8. What Wireshark is not
Here are some things Wireshark does not provide:
• Wireshark isn’t an intrusion detection system. It will not warn you when someone does strange things
on your network that he/she isn’t allowed to do. However, if strange things happen, Wireshark might
help you figure out what is really going on.
• Wireshark will not manipulate things on the network, it will only "measure" things from it. Wireshark
doesn’t send packets on the network or do other active things (except for name resolutions, but even
that can be disabled).
1.2. System Requirements
The amount of resources Wireshark needs depends on your environment and on the size of the capture file
you are analyzing. The values below should be fine for small to medium-sized capture files no more than
a few hundred MB. Larger capture files will require more memory and disk space.
Busy networks mean large captures
Working with a busy network can easily produce huge capture files. Capturing on a gigabit
or even 100 megabit network can produce hundreds of megabytes of capture data in a short
time. A fast processor, lots of memory and disk space is always a good idea.
If Wireshark runs out of memory it will crash. See https://wiki.wireshark.org/KnownBugs/OutOfMemory
for details and workarounds.
Although Wireshark captures packets using a separate process the main interface is single-threaded and
won’t benefit much from multi-core systems.
1.2.1. Microsoft Windows
• The current version of Wireshark should support any version of Windows that is still within its extended
support lifetime. At the time of writing this includes Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, Server 2016, Server 2012
R2, Server 2012, Server 2008 R2, and Server 2008.
• Any modern 64-bit AMD64/x86-64 or 32-bit x86 processor.
• 400 MB available RAM. Larger capture files require more RAM.
• 300 MB available disk space. Capture files require additional disk space.
• 1024×768 (1280×1024 or higher recommended) resolution with at least 16 bit color. 8 bit color should
work but user experience will be degraded. Power users will find multiple monitors useful.
• A supported network card for capturing
3
• Ethernet. Any card supported by Windows should work. See the wiki pages on Ethernet capture and
offloading for issues that may affect your environment.
• 802.11. See the Wireshark wiki page. Capturing raw 802.11 information may be difficult without
special equipment.
• Other media. See https://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/NetworkMedia.
Older versions of Windows which are outside Microsoft’s extended lifecycle support window are no longer
supported. It is often difficult or impossible to support these systems due to circumstances beyond our
control, such as third party libraries on which we depend or due to necessary features that are only present
in newer versions of Windows (such as hardened security or memory management).
Wireshark 1.12 was the last release branch to support Windows Server 2003. Wireshark 1.10 was the last
branch to officially support Windows XP. See the Wireshark release lifecycle page for more details.
1.2.2. UNIX / Linux
Wireshark runs on most UNIX and UNIX-like platforms including macOS and Linux. The system
requirements should be comparable to the Windows values listed above.
Binary packages are available for most Unices and Linux distributions including the following platforms:
Introduction
• Apple macOS
• Debian GNU/Linux
• FreeBSD
• Gentoo Linux
• HP-UX
• Mandriva Linux
• NetBSD
• OpenPKG
• Red Hat Enterprise/Fedora Linux
• Sun Solaris/i386
• Sun Solaris/SPARC
• Canonical Ubuntu
If a binary package is not available for your platform you can download the source and try to build it.
Please report your experiences to wireshark-dev[AT]wireshark.org.
1.3. Where to get Wireshark
You can get the latest copy of the program from the Wireshark website at https://www.wireshark.org/
download.html. The download page should automatically highlight the appropriate download for your
4
Introduction
platform and direct you to the nearest mirror. Official Windows and macOS installers are signed by the
Wireshark Foundation.
A new Wireshark version typically becomes available each month or two.
If you want to be notified about new Wireshark releases you should subscribe to the wireshark-announce
mailing list. You will find more details in Section 1.6.5, “Mailing Lists”.
1.4. A brief history of Wireshark
In late 1997 Gerald Combs needed a tool for tracking down network problems and wanted to learn more
about networking so he started writing Ethereal (the original name of the Wireshark project) as a way to
solve both problems.
Ethereal was initially released after several pauses in development in July 1998 as version 0.2.0. Within
days patches, bug reports, and words of encouragement started arriving and Ethereal was on its way to
success.
Not long after that Gilbert Ramirez saw its potential and contributed a low-level dissector to it.
In October, 1998 Guy Harris was looking for something better than tcpview so he started applying patches
and contributing dissectors to Ethereal.
In late 1998 Richard Sharpe, who was giving TCP/IP courses, saw its potential on such courses and started
looking at it to see if it supported the protocols he needed. While it didn’t at that point new protocols could
be easily added. So he started contributing dissectors and contributing patches.
The list of people who have contributed to the project has become very long since then, and almost all of
them started with a protocol that they needed that Wireshark or did not already handle. So they copied an
existing dissector and contributed the code back to the team.
In 2006 the project moved house and re-emerged under a new name: Wireshark.
In 2008, after ten years of development, Wireshark finally arrived at version 1.0. This release was the first
deemed complete, with the minimum features implemented. Its release coincided with the first Wireshark
Developer and User Conference, called Sharkfest.
In 2015 Wireshark 2.0 was released, which featured a new user interface.
1.5. Development and maintenance of Wireshark
Wireshark was initially developed by Gerald Combs. Ongoing development and maintenance of Wireshark
is handled by the Wireshark team, a loose group of individuals who fix bugs and provide new functionality.
There have also been a large number of people who have contributed protocol dissectors to Wireshark,
and it is expected that this will continue. You can find a list of the people who have contributed code to
Wireshark by checking the about dialog box of Wireshark, or at the authors page on the Wireshark web site.
Wireshark is an open source software project, and is released under the GNU General Public License
(GPL) version 2. All source code is freely available under the GPL. You are welcome to modify Wireshark
to suit your own needs, and it would be appreciated if you contribute your improvements back to the
Wireshark team.
You gain three benefits by contributing your improvements back to the community:
5
Introduction
1. Other people who find your contributions useful will appreciate them, and you will know that you
have helped people in the same way that the developers of Wireshark have helped people.
2. The developers of Wireshark might improve your changes even more, as there’s always room for
improvement. Or they may implement some advanced things on top of your code, which can be useful
for yourself too.
3. The maintainers and developers of Wireshark will maintain your code as well, fixing it when API
changes or other changes are made, and generally keeping it in tune with what is happening with
Wireshark. So if Wireshark is updated (which is done often), you can get a new Wireshark version
from the website and your changes will already be included without any effort for you.
The Wireshark source code and binary kits for some platforms are all available on the download page of
the Wireshark website: https://www.wireshark.org/download.html.
1.6. Reporting problems and getting help
If you have problems or need help with Wireshark there are several places that may be of interest to you
(well, besides this guide of course).
1.6.1. Website
You will find lots of useful information on the Wireshark homepage at https://www.wireshark.org/.
1.6.2. Wiki
The Wireshark Wiki at https://wiki.wireshark.org/ provides a wide range of information related to
Wireshark and packet capture in general. You will find a lot of information not part of this user’s guide.
For example, there is an explanation how to capture on a switched network, an ongoing effort to build a
protocol reference and a lot more.
And best of all, if you would like to contribute your knowledge on a specific topic (maybe a network
protocol you know well) you can edit the wiki pages by simply using your web browser.
1.6.3. Q&A Site
The Wireshark Q&A site at https://ask.wireshark.org/ offers a resource where questions and answers come
together. You have the option to search what questions were asked before and what answers were given
by people who knew about the issue. Answers are graded, so you can pick out the best ones easily. If your
question hasn’t been discussed before you can post one yourself.
1.6.4. FAQ
The Frequently Asked Questions lists often asked questions and their corresponding answers.
Read the FAQ
Before sending any mail to the mailing lists below, be sure to read the FAQ. It will often
answer any questions you might have. This will save yourself and others a lot of time. Keep
in mind that a lot of people are subscribed to the mailing lists.
You will find the FAQ inside Wireshark by clicking the menu item Help/Contents and selecting the FAQ
page in the dialog shown.
6
An online version is available at the Wireshark website at https://www.wireshark.org/faq.html. You might
prefer this online version, as it’s typically more up to date and the HTML format is easier to use.
1.6.5. Mailing Lists
There are several mailing lists of specific Wireshark topics available:
wireshark-announce
This mailing list will inform you about new program releases, which usually appear about every 4-8
weeks.
wireshark-users
This list is for users of Wireshark. People post questions about building and using Wireshark, others
(hopefully) provide answers.
wireshark-dev
This list is for Wireshark developers. If you want to start developing a protocol dissector, join this list.
You can subscribe to each of these lists from the Wireshark web site: https://www.wireshark.org/lists/.
From there, you can choose which mailing list you want to subscribe to by clicking on the Subscribe/
Unsubscribe/Options button under the title of the relevant list. The links to the archives are included on
that page as well.
Introduction
The lists are archived
You can search in the list archives to see if someone asked the same question some time
before and maybe already got an answer. That way you don’t have to wait until someone
answers your question.
1.6.6. Reporting Problems
Note
Before reporting any problems, please make sure you have installed the latest version of
Wireshark.
When reporting problems with Wireshark please supply the following information:
1. The version number of Wireshark and the dependent libraries linked with it, such as Qt or GLib. You
can obtain this from Wireshark’s about box or the command wireshark -v.
2. Information about the platform you run Wireshark on.
3. A detailed description of your problem.
4. If you get an error/warning message, copy the text of that message (and also a few lines before and
after it, if there are some) so others may find the place where things go wrong. Please don’t give
something like: "I get a warning while doing x" as this won’t give a good idea where to look.
Don’t send large files
Do not send large files (> 1 MB) to the mailing lists. Just place a note that further data
is available on request. Large files will only annoy a lot of people on the list who are not
interested in your specific problem. If required you will be asked for further data by the
persons who really can help you.
7
Introduction
Don’t send confidential information!
If you send capture files to the mailing lists be sure they don’t contain any sensitive or
confidential information like passwords or personally identifiable information (PII).
1.6.7. Reporting Crashes on UNIX/Linux platforms
When reporting crashes with Wireshark it is helpful if you supply the traceback information along with
the information mentioned in "Reporting Problems".
You can obtain this traceback information with the following commands on UNIX or Linux (note the
backticks):
$ gdb `whereis wireshark | cut -f2 -d: | cut -d' ' -f2` core >& backtrace.txt
backtrace
^D
If you do not have gdb available, you will have to check out your operating system’s debugger.
Mail backtrace.txt to wireshark-dev[AT]wireshark.org.
1.6.8. Reporting Crashes on Windows platforms
The Windows distributions don’t contain the symbol files (.pdb) because they are very large. You
can download them separately at https://www.wireshark.org/download/win32/all-versions/ and https://
www.wireshark.org/download/win64/all-versions/ .
8
Chapter 2. Building and Installing Wireshark
2.1. Introduction
As with all things there must be a beginning and so it is with Wireshark. To use Wireshark you must
first install it. If you are running Windows or macOS you can download an official release at https://
www.wireshark.org/download.html, install it, and skip the rest of this chapter.
If you are running another operating system such as Linux or FreeBSD you might want to install from
source. Several Linux distributions offer Wireshark packages but they commonly ship out-of-date versions.
No other versions of UNIX ship Wireshark so far. For that reason, you will need to know where to get the
latest version of Wireshark and how to install it.
This chapter shows you how to obtain source and binary packages and how to build Wireshark from source
should you choose to do so.
The following are the general steps you would use:
1. Download the relevant package for your needs, e.g. source or binary distribution.
2. Compile the source into a binary if needed. This may involve building and/or installing other necessary
packages.
3. Install the binaries into their final destinations.
2.2. Obtaining the source and binary distributions
You can obtain both source and binary distributions from the Wireshark web site: https://
www.wireshark.org/download.html. Select the download link and then select the desired binary or source
package.
Download all required files
If you are building Wireshark from source you will In general, unless you have already
downloaded Wireshark before, you will most likely need to download several source
packages if you are building Wireshark from source. This is covered in more detail below.
Once you have downloaded the relevant files, you can go on to the next step.
2.3. Installing Wireshark under Windows
Windows installer names contain the platform and version. For example, Wireshark-win64-2.5.0.exe
installs Wireshark 2.5.0 for 64-bit Windows. The Wireshark installer includes WinPcap which is required
for packet capture.
Simply download the Wireshark installer from https://www.wireshark.org/download.html and execute it.
Official packages are signed by the Wireshark Foundation. You can choose to install several optional
9
Building and Installing Wireshark
components and select the location of the installed package. The default settings are recommended for
most users.
2.3.1. Installation Components
On the Choose Components page of the installer you can select from the following:
• Wireshark - The network protocol analyzer that we all know and mostly love.
• TShark - A command-line network protocol analyzer. If you haven’t tried it you should.
• Wireshark 1 Legacy - The old (GTK+) user interface in case you need it.
• Plugins & Extensions - Extras for the Wireshark and TShark dissection engines
• Dissector Plugins - Plugins with some extended dissections.
• Tree Statistics Plugins - Extended statistics.
• Mate - Meta Analysis and Tracing Engine - User configurable extension(s) of the display filter
engine, see https://wiki.wireshark.org/Mate for details.
• SNMP MIBs - SNMP MIBs for a more detailed SNMP dissection.
• Tools - Additional command line tools to work with capture files
• Editcap - Reads a capture file and writes some or all of the packets into another capture file.
• Text2Pcap - Reads in an ASCII hex dump and writes the data into a pcap capture file.
• Reordercap - Reorders a capture file by timestamp.
• Mergecap - Combines multiple saved capture files into a single output file.
• Capinfos - Provides information on capture files.
• Rawshark - Raw packet filter.
• User’s Guide - Local installation of the User’s Guide. The Help buttons on most dialogs will require
an internet connection to show help pages if the User’s Guide is not installed locally.
2.3.2. Additional Tasks
• Start Menu Shortcuts - Add some start menu shortcuts.
• Desktop Icon - Add a Wireshark icon to the desktop.
• Quick Launch Icon - add a Wireshark icon to the Explorer quick launch toolbar.
• Associate file extensions to Wireshark - Associate standard network trace files to Wireshark.
2.3.3. Install Location
By default Wireshark installs into %ProgramFiles%\Wireshark on 32-bit Windows and
%ProgramFiles64%\Wireshark on 64-bit Windows. This expands to C:\Program Files
\Wireshark on most systems.
10
Building and Installing Wireshark
2.3.4. Installing WinPcap
The Wireshark installer contains the latest WinPcap installer.
If you don’t have WinPcap installed you won’t be able to capture live network traffic but you will still be
able to open saved capture files. By default the latest version of WinPcap will be installed. If you don’t
wish to do this or if you wish to reinstall WinPcap you can check the Install WinPcap box as needed.
For more information about WinPcap see https://www.winpcap.org/ and https://wiki.wireshark.org/
WinPcap.
2.3.5. Windows installer command line options
For special cases, there are some command line parameters available:
• /S runs the installer or uninstaller silently with default values. The silent installer will not install
WinPCap.
• /desktopicon installation of the desktop icon, =yes - force installation, =no - don’t install,
otherwise use default settings. This option can be useful for a silent installer.
• /quicklaunchicon installation of the quick launch icon, =yes - force installation, =no - don’t
install, otherwise use default settings.
• /D sets the default installation directory ($INSTDIR), overriding InstallDir and InstallDirRegKey. It
must be the last parameter used in the command line and must not contain any quotes even if the path
contains spaces.
• /NCRC disables the CRC check. We recommend against using this flag.
Example:
> Wireshark-win64-wireshark-2.0.5.exe /NCRC /S /desktopicon=yes /quicklaunchicon=no /
D=C:\Program Files\Foo
Running the installer without any parameters shows the normal interactive installer.
2.3.6. Manual WinPcap Installation
As mentioned above, the Wireshark installer takes care of installing WinPcap. The following is only
necessary if you want to use a different version than the one included in the Wireshark installer, e.g.
because a new WinPcap version was released.
Additional WinPcap versions (including newer alpha or beta releases) can be downloaded from the
main WinPcap site at https://www.winpcap.org/. The Installer for Windows supports modern Windows
operating systems.
2.3.7. Update Wireshark
By default the offical Windows package will check for new versions and notify you when they are
available. If you have the Check for updates preference disabled or if you run Wireshark in an isolated
environment you should subcribe to the wireshark-announce mailing list. See Section 1.6.5, “Mailing
Lists” for details on subscribing to this list.
11
Building and Installing Wireshark
New versions of Wireshark are usually released every four to six weeks. Updating Wireshark is done the
same way as installing it. Simply download and start the installer exe. A reboot is usually not required and
all your personal settings remain unchanged.
2.3.8. Update WinPcap
New versions of WinPcap are less frequently available. You will find WinPcap update instructions the
WinPcap web site at https://www.winpcap.org/. You may have to reboot your machine after installing a
new WinPcap version.
2.3.9. Uninstall Wireshark
You can uninstall Wireshark using the Programs and Features control panel. Select the "Wireshark" entry
to start the uninstallation procedure.
The Wireshark uninstaller provides several options for removal. The default is to remove the core
components but keep your personal settings and WinPcap. WinPcap is left installed by default in case
other programs need it.
2.3.10. Uninstall WinPcap
You can uninstall WinPcap independently of Wireshark using the WinPcap entry in the Programs and
Features control panel. Remember that if you uninstall WinPcap you won’t be able to capture anything
with Wireshark.
2.4. Installing Wireshark under macOS
The official macOS packages are distributed as disk images (.dmg) containing the application installer. To
install Wireshark simply open the disk image and run the enclosed installer.
The installer package includes Wireshark, its related command line utilities, and a launch daemon that
adjusts capture permissions at system startup. See the included Read me first file for more details.
2.5. Building Wireshark from source under UNIX
Building Wireshark requires the proper build environment including a compiler and many supporting
libraries. See the Developer’s Guide at https://www.wireshark.org/docs/ for more information.
Use the following general steps to build Wireshark from source under UNIX or Linux:
1. Unpack the source from its compressed tar file. If you are using Linux or your version of UNIX
uses GNU tar you can use the following command:
$ tar xaf wireshark-2.4.5.tar.xz
In other cases you will have to use the following commands:
$ xz -d wireshark-2.4.5.tar.xz
$ tar xf wireshark-2.4.5.tar
2. Change directory to the Wireshark source directory.
12
Building and Installing Wireshark
$ cd wireshark-2.4.5
3. Configure your source so it will build correctly for your version of UNIX. You can do this with the
following command:
$ ./configure
If this step fails you will have to rectify the problems and rerun configure. Troubleshooting hints
are provided in Section 2.7, “Troubleshooting during the install on Unix”.
4. Build the sources.
$ make
5. Install the software in its final destination.
$ make install
Once you have installed Wireshark with make install above, you should be able to run it by entering
wireshark.
2.6. Installing the binaries under UNIX
In general installing the binary under your version of UNIX will be specific to the installation methods
used with your version of UNIX. For example, under AIX, you would use smit to install the Wireshark
binary package, while under Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX) you would use setld.
2.6.1. Installing from RPM’s under Red Hat and alike
Building RPMs from Wireshark’s source code results in several packages (most distributions follow the
same system):
• The wireshark package contains the core Wireshark libraries and command-line tools.
• The wireshark-qt package contains the Qt-based GUI.
• The wireshark-gtk (formerly wireshark-gnome) package contains the legacy Gtk+ based GUI.
Many distributions use yum or a similar package management tool to make installation of software
(including its dependencies) easier. If your distribution uses yum, use the following command to install
Wireshark together with the Qt GUI:
yum install wireshark wireshark-qt
If you’ve built your own RPMs from the Wireshark sources you can install them by running, for example:
rpm -ivh wireshark-2.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm wireshark-qt-2.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm
If the above command fails because of missing dependencies, install the dependencies first, and then retry
the step above.
2.6.2. Installing from deb’s under Debian, Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives
If you can just install from the repository then use
$ aptitude install wireshark
13
Building and Installing Wireshark
Aptitude should take care of all of the dependency issues for you.
Use the following command to install downloaded Wireshark deb’s under Debian:
$ dpkg -i wireshark-common_2.0.5.0-1_i386.deb wireshark_wireshark-2.0.5.0-1_i386.deb
dpkg doesn’t take care of all dependencies, but reports what’s missing.
Capturing requires privileges
By installing Wireshark packages non-root users won’t gain rights automatically to capture
packets. To allow non-root users to capture packets follow the procedure described in /usr/
share/doc/wireshark-common/README.Debian
2.6.3. Installing from portage under Gentoo Linux
Use the following command to install Wireshark under Gentoo Linux with all of the extra features:
$ USE="c-ares gtk ipv6 portaudio snmp ssl kerberos threads selinux" emerge wireshark
2.6.4. Installing from packages under FreeBSD
Use the following command to install Wireshark under FreeBSD:
$ pkg_add -r wireshark
pkg_add should take care of all of the dependency issues for you.
2.7. Troubleshooting during the install on Unix
A number of errors can occur during the installation process. Some hints on solving these are provided here.
If the configure stage fails you will need to find out why. You can check the file config.log in
the source directory to find out what failed. The last few lines of this file should help in determining the
problem.
The standard problems are that you do not have a required development package on your system or that
the development package isn’t new enough. Note that installing a library package isn’t enough. You need
to install its development package as well. configure will also fail if you do not have libpcap (at least
the required include files) on your system.
If you cannot determine what the problems are, send an email to the wireshark-dev mailing list explaining
your problem. Include the output from config.log and anything else you think is relevant such as a
trace of the make stage.
2.8. Building from source under Windows
We strongly recommended that you use the binary installer for Windows unless you want to start
developing Wireshark on the Windows platform.
For further information how to build Wireshark for Windows from the sources see the Developer’s Guide
at https://www.wireshark.org/docs/.
You may also want to have a look at the Development Wiki (https://wiki.wireshark.org/Development) for
the latest available development documentation.
14
Chapter 3. User Interface
3.1. Introduction
By now you have installed Wireshark and are most likely keen to get started capturing your first packets.
In the next chapters we will explore:
• How the Wireshark user interface works
• How to capture packets in Wireshark
• How to view packets in Wireshark
• How to filter packets in Wireshark
• … and many other things!
3.2. Start Wireshark
You can start Wireshark from your shell or window manager.
Power user tip
When starting Wireshark it’s possible to specify optional settings using the command line.
See Section 10.2, “Start Wireshark from the command line” for details.
In the following chapters a lot of screenshots from Wireshark will be shown. As Wireshark runs on
many different platforms with many different window managers, different styles applied and there are
different versions of the underlying GUI toolkit used, your screen might look different from the provided
screenshots. But as there are no real differences in functionality these screenshots should still be well
understandable.
3.3. The Main window
Let’s look at Wireshark’s user interface. Figure 3.1, “The Main window” shows Wireshark as you would
usually see it after some packets are captured or loaded (how to do this will be described later).
15
Figure 3.1. The Main window
User Interface
Wireshark’s main window consists of parts that are commonly known from many other GUI programs.
1. The menu (see Section 3.4, “The Menu”) is used to start actions.
2. The main toolbar (see Section 3.16, “The “Main” toolbar”) provides quick access to frequently used
items from the menu.
3. The filter toolbar (see Section 3.17, “The “Filter” toolbar”) provides a way to directly manipulate the
currently used display filter (see Section 6.3, “Filtering packets while viewing”).
4. The packet list pane (see Section 3.18, “The “Packet List” pane”) displays a summary of each packet
captured. By clicking on packets in this pane you control what is displayed in the other two panes.
5. The packet details pane (see Section 3.19, “The “Packet Details” pane”) displays the packet selected
in the packet list pane in more detail.
6. The packet bytes pane (see Section 3.20, “The “Packet Bytes” pane”) displays the data from the packet
selected in the packet list pane, and highlights the field selected in the packet details pane.
7. The statusbar (see Section 3.21, “The Statusbar”) shows some detailed information about the current
program state and the captured data.
Tip
The layout of the main window can be customized by changing preference settings. See
Section 10.5, “Preferences” for details!
16
User Interface
3.3.1. Main Window Navigation
Packet list and detail navigation can be done entirely from the keyboard. Table 3.1, “Keyboard Navigation”
shows a list of keystrokes that will let you quickly move around a capture file. See Table 3.5, “Go menu
items” for additional navigation keystrokes.
Table 3.1. Keyboard Navigation
Accelerator Description
Tab, Shift+Tab Move between screen elements, e.g. from the toolbars to the packet list to the
packet detail.
Down Move to the next packet or detail item.
Up Move to the previous packet or detail item.
Ctrl+Down, F8 Move to the next packet, even if the packet list isn’t focused.
Ctrl+Up, F7 Move to the previous packet, even if the packet list isn’t focused.
Ctrl+. Move to the next packet of the conversation (TCP, UDP or IP).
Ctrl+, Move to the previous packet of the conversation (TCP, UDP or IP).
Alt+Right or
Option+Right (macOS)
Alt+Left or
Option+Right (macOS)
Left In the packet detail, closes the selected tree item. If it’s already closed, jumps
Right In the packet detail, opens the selected tree item.
Shift+Right In the packet detail, opens the selected tree item and all of its subtrees.
Ctrl+Right In the packet detail, opens all tree items.
Ctrl+Left In the packet detail, closes all tree items.
Backspace In the packet detail, jumps to the parent node.
Return, Enter In the packet detail, toggles the selected tree item.
Move to the next packet in the selection history.
Move to the previous packet in the selection history.
to the parent node.
Help → About Wireshark → Keyboard Shortcuts will show a list of all shortcuts in the main window.
Additionally, typing anywhere in the main window will start filling in a display filter.
3.4. The Menu
Wireshark’s main menu is located either at the top of the main window (Windows, Linux) or at the top of
your main screen (macOS). An example is shown in Figure 3.2, “The Menu”.
Note
Some menu items will be disabled (greyed out) if the corresponding feature isn’t available.
For example, you cannot save a capture file if you haven’t captured or loaded any packets.
Figure 3.2. The Menu
17
User Interface
The main menu contains the following items:
File
This menu contains items to open and merge capture files, save, print, or export capture files in whole
or in part, and to quit the Wireshark application. See Section 3.5, “The “File” menu”.
Edit
This menu contains items to find a packet, time reference or mark one or more packets, handle
configuration profiles, and set your preferences; (cut, copy, and paste are not presently implemented).
See Section 3.6, “The “Edit” menu”.
View
This menu controls the display of the captured data, including colorization of packets, zooming the
font, showing a packet in a separate window, expanding and collapsing trees in packet details, ….
See Section 3.7, “The “View” menu”.
Go
This menu contains items to go to a specific packet. See Section 3.8, “The “Go” menu”.
Capture
This menu allows you to start and stop captures and to edit capture filters. See Section 3.9, “The
“Capture” menu”.
Analyze
This menu contains items to manipulate display filters, enable or disable the dissection of protocols,
configure user specified decodes and follow a TCP stream. See Section 3.10, “The “Analyze” menu”.
Statistics
This menu contains items to display various statistic windows, including a summary of the packets
that have been captured, display protocol hierarchy statistics and much more. See Section 3.11, “The
“Statistics” menu”.
Telephony
This menu contains items to display various telephony related statistic windows, including a media
analysis, flow diagrams, display protocol hierarchy statistics and much more. See Section 3.12, “The
“Telephony” menu”.
Wireless
The items in this menu show Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11 wireless statistics.
Tools
This menu contains various tools available in Wireshark, such as creating Firewall ACL Rules. See
Section 3.13, “The “Tools” menu”.
Help
This menu contains items to help the user, e.g. access to some basic help, manual pages of the
various command line tools, online access to some of the webpages, and the usual about dialog. See
Section 3.15, “The “Help” menu”.
Each of these menu items is described in more detail in the sections that follow.
Shortcuts make life easier
Most common menu items have keyboard shortcuts. For example, you can press the Control
(or Strg in German) and the K keys together to open the “Capture Options” dialog.
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3.5. The “File” menu
The Wireshark file menu contains the fields shown in Table 3.2, “File menu items”.
Figure 3.3. The “File” Menu
User Interface
Table 3.2. File menu items
Menu Item Accelerator Description
Open… Ctrl+O This shows the file open dialog box that allows
you to load a capture file for viewing. It is
discussed in more detail in Section 5.2.1, “The
“Open Capture File” dialog box”.
Open Recent This lets you open recently opened capture files.
Clicking on one of the submenu items will open
the corresponding capture file directly.
Merge… This menu item lets you merge a capture file into
the currently loaded one. It is discussed in more
detail in Section 5.4, “Merging capture files”.
Import from Hex Dump… This menu item brings up the import file dialog
box that allows you to import a text file containing
a hex dump into a new temporary capture. It is
discussed in more detail in Section 5.5, “Import
hex dump”.
Close Ctrl+W This menu item closes the current capture. If you
haven’t saved the capture, you will be asked to
do so first (this can be disabled by a preference
setting).
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