Network Troubleshooting with tcpdump and Wireshark

Network troubleshooting is an essential skill for system administrators, DevOps engineers, and security professionals. When applications fail or perform poorly, packet-level analysis often reveals the root cause. This comprehensive guide explores tcpdump and Wireshark, the industry-standard tools for capturing and analyzing network traffic.

Understanding Packet Capture

Packet capture operates at the network interface level, intercepting all traffic passing through. Both tcpdump and Wireshark use libpcap (or WinPcap/Npcap on Windows), which provides a portable framework for low-level network monitoring^[1].