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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

Wi-Fi problems can be difficult to troubleshoot because symptoms such as poor performance, intermittent connectivity, failure to connect, or unreliable applications may originate from several different parts of the wireless network. Wireshark gives technicians and engineers packet-level visibility into what Wi-Fi clients and networks are actually doing.

Wireshark Wi-Fi Analysis in a Day is an intensive one-day hands-on course designed to develop practical skills for analyzing and troubleshooting Wi-Fi/WLAN traffic with Wireshark. Using a “follow me” learning approach, students work alongside the instructor while examining packet captures representing common wireless behaviors and potential problem conditions.

The course focuses on the Wireshark features and analysis techniques that are most useful when troubleshooting Wi-Fi. Students begin by verifying and customizing Wireshark specifically for wireless analysis and then investigate problems involving Wi-Fi network membership, performance, data communications, and Quality of Service.

Throughout the course, students learn to distinguish normal Wi-Fi behavior from abnormal behavior and use packet-level evidence to determine where troubleshooting should focus. Wireshark filtering and other analysis tools are used to reduce packet captures to the traffic that matters and help identify meaningful patterns and potential problem areas.

The course concludes by bringing these individual skills together into a repeatable Wi-Fi/WLAN troubleshooting workflow that students can apply in their daily work.

This course helps answer questions such as:

How should Wireshark be customized specifically for Wi-Fi analysis?
What packet evidence can reveal why a client cannot successfully join a wireless network?
How can Wireshark help investigate Wi-Fi performance problems?
How can wireless data communications be analyzed at the packet level?
What can packet captures reveal about Wi-Fi Quality of Service?
How can normal Wi-Fi behavior be distinguished from abnormal behavior?
How can Wireshark be incorporated into a repeatable WLAN troubleshooting process?

Course Objectives

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

Customize Wireshark specifically for Wi-Fi analysis.
Evaluate Wi-Fi network acquisition and membership behavior.
Distinguish proper Wi-Fi network behavior from improper network behavior.
Develop a repeatable workflow for identifying Wi-Fi 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 Wi-Fi/WLAN communications.

Ideal participants include:

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

The course is particularly valuable for professionals who already work with Wi-Fi networks and want to improve their ability to use packet evidence to determine what happened, what is behaving normally, and where troubleshooting should focus next.

Course Prerequisites

This course is designed for anyone who needs practical skills for analyzing Wi-Fi/WLAN traffic using Wireshark.

The ideal student has some previous experience with Wireshark and basic knowledge of IEEE 802.11/Wi-Fi operation. 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 Wi-Fi/WLAN 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 Wi-Fi Analysis

Section 3: Wi-Fi Network Membership Issues

Section 4: Wi-Fi Performance

Section 5: Wi-Fi Data Issues

Section 6: Wi-Fi Quality of Service Issues

Section 7: Developing the Wi-Fi/WLAN 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-I – Wireshark Wi-Fi Analysis in a Day – 1 Day