Wireshark Layer 2-3 pcap Analysis w/ Challenges (CCNP SWITCH)

Johannes Weber, a networking and security professional, has done something really cool while preparing for his CCNP SWITCH exam.  He has built a lab with some networking equipment, configured it all, and captured network traffic, featuring a variety of level 2 and 3 protocols.  He has published his setup, the captured traffic, and a variety of challenges, that helped him to prepare, and which can help others.

While preparing for my CCNP SWITCH exam I built a laboratory with 4 switches, 3 routers and 2 workstations in order to test almost all layer 2/3 protocols that are related to network management traffic. And because “PCAP or it didn’t happen” I captured 22 of these protocols to further investigate them with Wireshark. Oh oh, I remember the good old times where I merely used unmanaged layer 2 switches. 😉

In this blogpost I am publishing the captured pcap file with all of these 22 protocols. I am further listing 45 CHALLENGES as an exercise for the reader. Feel free to download the pcap and to test your protocol skills with Wireshark! Use the comment section below for posting your answers.

Of course I am running my lab fully dual-stacked, i.e., with IPv6 and legacy IP.

I think these are great for several reasons:

  • A feature-rich and complete networking setup, which is not easily available to everyone.
  • A fixed set of data (captured network traffic).
  • Plenty of very specific, testable, and verifiable questions.
  • Overall, very helpful resource from an experience professional, for anybody who wants to know about networks.
  • Overall, a great set of questions and challenges for those interviewing networking candidates.

The lab setup includes the following:

  • 1x Cisco Catalyst 2960, (C2960-LANBASEK9-M), Version 15.0(2)SE9
  • 2x Cisco Catalyst 2950, (C2950-I6K2L2Q4-M), Version 12.1(22)EA14
  • 1x Cisco Catalast 3560, (C3560-IPSERVICESK9-M), Version 12.2(55)SE10
  • 3x Cisco Router 2811, (C2800NM-ADVENTERPRISEK9-M), Version 15.1(4)M9
  • 2x old Notebooks, Dell or somewhat, running either Ubuntu or Knoppix Linux

Personally, I am not very involved with networks these days.  But even for more me the above setup serves as a reminder of how complex underlying technology infrastructure has got in recent years – hardware, software, protocols, and all.

How to set SG200-26P to factory default settings

This thread was helpful, even though it’s for a smaller, 8-port switch.  Basically:

  1. Disconnect the switch from all possible DHCP servers (unless you like playing hide-and-seek).
  2. Connect the link port directly to your laptop’s Ethernet port.
  3. Configure your laptop’s network interface to be in the 192.168.1.1/24 network, but avoid the 192.168.1.254.
  4. Now find a small pin (I used the one from the office stepler) and push into the Reset hole of the switch for about 30 seconds.  You’ll see all the switch ports blink when you are done.
  5. Remove the pin.
  6. Start pinging 192.168.1.254 … it’ll take a few minutes before you get a reply.
  7. Once the ping starts working, navigate to http://192.168.1.254 .  It’ll help if your browser doesn’t have any proxy servers configured.
  8. Login with username cisco, password cisco.
  9. ???
  10. PROFIT!

 

Shell keyboard shortcuts

I came across a very useful post with the listing of many shell keyboard shortcuts.  The article covers a mix of bash, csh, zsh, and Cisco shell keyboard shortcuts.  The article is in Russian, but I think it will be helpful for more people, so I took the liberty to translate it.  Continue reading for the translation.

Continue reading Shell keyboard shortcuts