GNS3 Packet Capture Using wireshark | Configure WIRESHARK in GNS3

How to use the Wireshark with Gns3:

In this article I will show you how to use Wireshark with Gns3 for packet capturing. Wireshark is a packet capturing and network analyzer software also known as sniffer or network sniffer. Wireshark will allow you to see, even under detailed level, what is happening in your network. It is also free, open source, cross-platform. I personally rate it is the best tool to network audit and for packet analyzing and capturing. It has a graphical interface and many options for organizing and filtering information. So, you can see all the traffic passing through a network. Using different filters you can analyze the specific protocol packets, like if you want to analyze the routing protocol handshaking of any protocol you can achieve it with wireshark and Gns3.

Wireshark Features

  • Available for Linux and Windows
  • Live Packet capture from any network interface
  • Displays packets with detailed information
  • You can save captured packets and can analyze it later
  • Import and export packets in different formats
  • Packet filtering information
  • Highlighting packages depending on the filter
  • Create statistics

Wireshark is also helpful for following professionals:
  • For network Administrators who can use it for solving different network problems
  • Engineers can use it for checking different security issues of network
  • Developers can use wireshark for debug and implementation of network protocols
  • Students can use it to learn how different protocol works internally in a network
  • Hackers use it to view equipment configurations as in this case cisco routing capture frames .. J



You can also use wireshark with Gns3 for packet capturing, this is the default packet capturing tool that comes with full GNS3 package. By default it is auto configured with Gns3, you can confirm its configuration from edit/preferences. you can see it default setting in figure, if you have any issue with using wireshark with Gns3 you can match your setting with following setting:
For capturing any interface you can follow these steps:
1.       start you network device in Gns3
2.       right click on the link between the two devices/routers and then click on start capture
1.       it will ask you for interface selection, select the interface you want to capture the packets.

1.       Once you have selected your interface click on OK, this will open the wireshark, where you can see the all network packets movement access the selected interface.

I hope this short article is helpful for you and thank you for reading it.
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