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1-Day Instructor-Led Hands-On Lab Course
Available through Web-Based Live Delivery or On-Site Delivery
Minimum 8 Students – Maximum 16 Students

What Students are saying about this class:

“[The instructor] explains things in a way that any of us can understand.”
“Seeing scenarios first hand. Knowing where to look.”
“Like that it is almost all hands on and not just talking and slideshows.”
“Instructor presents everything very clearly and enthusiastically”
“Like how the instructor periodically comes back to the same core concepts to reinforce them”
“The best part was learning about all of the most useful features and tools in Wireshark, and the hands on exercises in the lab were particularly good at highlighting how to get the most out of the tool. Also Andy Walding is and EXCELLENT instructor he did an excellent job of covering the most important aspects of the tools and protocols and he has a very deep understanding of the subject material.”
“The Online School is a great resource, I’m glad to know that this school exists!”

Course Description

TCP is fundamental to modern network communications, but troubleshooting TCP problems can be challenging. Retransmissions, connection failures, application delays, packet loss, window behavior, and other symptoms must be interpreted carefully before deciding whether TCP itself, the network, or an application is responsible.

Wireshark TCP Analysis in a Day is an intensive one-day hands-on course designed to develop practical skills for analyzing and troubleshooting TCP communications with Wireshark. Using a “follow me” learning approach, students work alongside the instructor while examining packet captures that demonstrate normal TCP operation as well as potential problem conditions.

Rather than attempting an exhaustive study of every aspect of TCP, the course concentrates on the TCP behavior and Wireshark techniques that are most useful during everyday network troubleshooting. Students begin by verifying and customizing Wireshark specifically for TCP analysis and then examine the TCP three-way handshake, performance behavior, common TCP issues, and TCP failures.

A major emphasis is placed on distinguishing symptoms from causes. A retransmission, duplicate acknowledgment, slow connection, or failed session may indicate a problem, but packet evidence must be examined in context before determining what actually happened.

Students learn to use Wireshark filtering and analysis features to isolate TCP conversations, follow connection behavior, recognize normal versus abnormal patterns, and identify evidence that helps narrow the troubleshooting process.

The course concludes by bringing these individual analysis skills together into a repeatable TCP troubleshooting workflow that students can apply in day-to-day network operations.

This course helps answer questions such as:

How should Wireshark be configured specifically for TCP analysis?
What should a normal TCP three-way handshake look like?
What can the handshake reveal when a connection fails?
What packet behavior can indicate TCP performance problems?
What do retransmissions, duplicate acknowledgments, resets, and other TCP symptoms mean?
How can packet analysis help distinguish a network problem from an endpoint or application problem?
How can Wireshark help determine whether TCP is actually the cause of poor performance?
What repeatable process can be used when troubleshooting TCP communications?

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to develop practical, hands-on skills for using Wireshark to analyze TCP traffic in the following key areas:

Customize Wireshark specifically for TCP protocol analysis.
Evaluate the TCP three-way handshake.
Distinguish proper TCP behavior from improper or abnormal TCP network behavior.
Analyze TCP performance and common problem conditions.
Identify TCP failures using packet-level evidence.
Develop a repeatable workflow for investigating TCP issues that can be applied in daily operations.

Audience

This course is designed for networking professionals who need practical skills for using Wireshark to analyze and troubleshoot TCP communications.

Ideal participants include:

Central-office and field technicians who need to capture and analyze TCP traffic
Network administrators and support personnel responsible for TCP-related problems
Operations personnel responsible for network configuration, monitoring, and support
Network design engineers who use Wireshark as a TCP analysis and troubleshooting tool
Technical marketing professionals working with TCP/IP technologies
Technical sales professionals who need to correlate product features with actual network behavior
Engineering, test, customer-support, and technical personnel who want more than a basic understanding of Wireshark and TCP

The course is particularly valuable for technicians, engineers, network operations personnel, and support teams who need to move beyond simply identifying TCP symptoms and determine what the packet evidence says about the actual cause of a problem.

Course Prerequisites

This course is designed for anyone who needs practical skills for analyzing TCP traffic using Wireshark.

The ideal student has some previous experience with Wireshark and a basic understanding of TCP/IP protocols. However, the guided hands-on format allows students to follow the instructor through each analysis exercise without requiring advanced prior packet-analysis experience.

Students should attend with a laptop computer running Windows, macOS, or Linux with a current operational version of Wireshark installed.

Class size is limited to 16 students.

Course Materials

Students receive a PDF Course Student/Lab Guide.

Access to specialized TCP Wireshark profiles and packet captures is also provided through the CellStream Online School of Network Sciences.

Course Outline

Section 1: Course Introduction and Logistics

Section 2: Verifying and Customizing Wireshark for TCP Protocol Analysis

Section 3: Analyzing the TCP Three-Way Handshake

Section 4: Analyzing TCP Performance

Section 5: Identifying and Analyzing TCP Issues

Section 6: Analyzing TCP Failures

Section 7: Developing the TCP Troubleshooting Workflow

Course Availability:

View the course calendar and browse for our schedule. It will show scheduled courses and available dates for scheduling.

CSI-HO-020-J – Wireshark TCP Analysis in a Day – 1 Day