Networking and Computing Tips and Tricks

Welcome to CellStream’s Networking and Computing Tips resource center, where technology professionals, students, and enthusiasts can find practical guidance, troubleshooting techniques, and real-world solutions for today’s networking and computing challenges. Our goal is to help you work smarter, solve problems faster, and build a stronger foundation of technical knowledge.

Whether you’re configuring a network, optimizing system performance, learning a new technology, or troubleshooting a difficult issue, you’ll find valuable insights drawn from decades of industry experience. From Wireshark packet analysis and broadband technologies to Windows, Linux, cybersecurity, Wi-Fi, and Internet protocols, our tips are designed to be practical, actionable, and immediately useful.

What You’ll Find Here

• Step-by-step technical guides and how-to articles
• Networking troubleshooting techniques and best practices
• Wireshark tips, packet analysis workflows, and protocol insights
• Windows, Linux, and computing optimization recommendations
• Cybersecurity awareness and protection strategies
• Broadband, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, TCP/IP, and Internet technology guidance
• Productivity tips and tools for network engineers and IT professionals

Popular Topics Include

• Improving network troubleshooting efficiency
• Optimizing computer and operating system performance
• Securing devices, accounts, and data
• Capturing and analyzing packets with Wireshark
• Understanding TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi technologies
• Using industry tools more effectively

Join the Conversation

We’re always looking for new ideas, questions, and topics to explore. If there’s a networking or computing subject you’d like us to cover, or if you need help solving a technical challenge, connect with us through our Discord community or contact us directly.

Please note that not all tips, procedures, and configuration examples apply to every operating system, network device, software version, or vendor platform. Always verify compatibility and test changes in a controlled environment before implementing them in production networks.

Correlating Multiple Wireshark Captures: Follow the Same Packet Across the Network

Networking and Computing Tips and Tricks / By

Post Views: 122 So many times I have watched YouTube videos and read articles that jump right into Wireshark troubleshooting of multiple captures of a network conversation or event from multiple points in the network. To me, that can be unnecessarily overwhelming to those learning packet capture. In many videos, it never becomes clear why

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sngrep: The SIP Troubleshooting Tool You Should Know

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Post Views: 121 If you work with VoIP, and more specifically SIP long enough, eventually you find yourself staring at an INVITE, a handful of provisional responses, several IP addresses, a 200 OK, an ACK, and perhaps a BYE—and trying to mentally reconstruct what actually happened. Wireshark can certainly do this. In fact, Wireshark remains

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Turn Wireshark Columns into Calculated Network Analytics

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Post Views: 148 Most Wireshark users eventually discover Custom Columns. Instead of being limited to the standard Source, Destination, Protocol, Length, and Info columns, you can add useful fields such as: tcp.stream tcp.analysis.ack_rtt dns.qry.name vlan.id That alone can make packet analysis much easier. But in newer versions of Wireshark, Custom Columns can do much more

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The Wireshark $ Operator: Build Filters Around the Packet You Click

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Post Views: 722 Most Wireshark display filters use values that you type manually. For example: ip.addr == 192.168.1.100 or: tcp.stream == 14 But Wireshark has a lesser-known capability that lets you build a filter using values from the packet you currently have selected. That capability is called a field reference, and it uses the $

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The Best Auto Switch Filters for Wireshark Profiles

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Post Views: 289 One of the cooler features added to recent versions of Wireshark is the ability to automatically select a Configuration Profile when you open a capture file. I covered how to configure this feature in my earlier article, Automatically Switch Configuration Profiles in Wireshark. Since then, I have spent more time thinking about

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Our BGP Lab Series is Up

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Post Views: 268 Network Engineers and folks learning networking – my BGP Lab series is now available – you will find them here. There are three Labs that include GNS3 topologies, and PCAPS to emulate and capture these awesome labs. Starting with Basic, then looking at Multihop eBGP, then examining the protocol with Wireshark, then

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OSPF Lab Series Now Available

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Post Views: 347 Network Engineers and folks learning networking – my OSPF Lab series is now available – you will find them here. There are three Labs that include GNS3 topologies, and PCAPS to emulate and capture these awesome labs: We have also begun our BGP series as well with new labs coming each week.

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OSPF Specifications – A Complete Library

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Post Views: 386 Open Shortest Path First, or OSPF, is a dynamic routing protocol used by routers to exchange information about available IPv4 and IPv6 networks. It is classified as a link-state Interior Gateway Protocol, meaning it is designed to operate within a single organization or autonomous system. OSPF allows routers to automatically learn the

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Our Comprehensive Wi-Fi Troubleshooting Guide

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Post Views: 2,631 Hi everyone! As many of you who have attended my conference presentations and Wi-Fi classes know, I spend time talking about the correct way of troubleshooting Wi-Fi networks. **********JUST UPDATED************* Power cycling or rebooting is NOT a first step. Here’s why: lets say you are having issues of some kind (slow speed,

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Wireshark Troubleshooting Workflow

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Post Views: 527 Do not troubleshoot Wireshark captures by chasing random red and black packets. Start with triage, classify the traffic, branch into the correct protocol workflow, and then prove the finding with packet evidence. The following is a shortened version of our structured “Triage → Classify → Branch → Prove” Wireshark troubleshooting workflow built

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Configuring Windows Firewall Rules using netsh

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Post Views: 28,596 Windows Firewall allows you to control the traffic entering and leaving your system through various rules. You can create and configure firewall rules to permit or block specific network activities. If you are looking for a more complete curated and advanced set of examples – join our Patreon community and check out

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Extracting VoIP Packets from Multiple Captures

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Post Views: 897 Let’s say you are a CO Tech/Engineer or an enterprise network engineer that works with Voice over IP (VoIP). Let’s further say that there are issues with one or more users so you have done a bunch of packet captures, perhaps even used Wireshark’s Ring Buffer capability, and now you want to

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How to Set a WLAN Frequency or Channel in Linux for Wireshark Packet Capture

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Post Views: 1,988 Learning how to manually control Wi-Fi channels in Linux is a foundational skill for wireless troubleshooting and packet analysis. Proper channel selection is critical because Wi-Fi troubleshooting is highly dependent on capturing the correct RF environment at the correct moment in time. When combined with Wireshark, Linux monitor mode provides one of

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