One time I opened a bug with the developers for a customer performance issue. Multiple tech support folks had already tried to solve it and after it was escalated to me, I couldn't figure it out either. It took two more weeks of back and forth with development, support, and the customer until the devs figured it out.

Wanna know what it was?

Duplex mismatch.

I wanted to crawl into a hole in the ground and not come out for a month. I felt terrible and embarrassed for wasting so much of development's and the customer's time. Should the problem have been caught before it was escalated to me? Sure.

But I tried to jump into deep analysis while overlooking the fundamentals and it was costly to my company, the customer, and more importantly, my reputation.

PacketBomb Fundamentals isn't about the deep analysis - it's about teaching you what you need to know and do before you go deep. It's about laying the proper groundwork to set yourself up for success.

The PacketBomb Fundamentals course will build your knowledge in packet analysis from the ground up with two hours of video content in a step-by-step course with downloadable cheat sheets, references, and a case study exercise.

In this course, you'll learn what to do before you ever fire up Wireshark. I'll go over how to narrow down a problem so it's less overwhelming. How to understand the problem better than the people who are reporting it. If you define the problem specifically, the analysis is so much easy later.

Here's a lesson from the course on defining the problem:​

Then we'll talk about where in the network that it's ideal to capture the data. Once you've identified where, we'll go over in-depth the options for how to capture the data. We'll cover what to do for easily reproducible issues and hard, intermittent issues.

Here a snip of lesson on capturing the data:​

Once you do the capture, how do you know you got what you needed? We talk about that too. Along the way, I'll give you downloadable reference and cheat sheets that you can save on your computer, phone, in the cloud, or print out and tape to your bathroom mirror. There's also additional reference material to read along with the lessons.

Then we get into how to setup Wireshark to optimize your chance for success - for increasing the odds of spotting the issue. We go over profiles, configurations, preferences, and coloring rules and how to use them to your advantage. You'll be able to download and use the Wireshark configuration profile from the course.

Here's the entire lesson on setting up Wireshark:​

After that, we'll go over your analysis first steps. Where to start, where to look, and how to approach the daunting task of finding a needle in a haystack.

Lastly, you'll be able to apply all that you've learned in a real life case study submitted by a PacketBomb student. A user is getting their Remote Desktop Connections disconnected and you get to do the analysis.

By the end of the course, you'll be much more familiar and comfortable with Wireshark. You'll be able to do some basic analysis and you'll be setup to continue your journey to becoming an expert.

Here's the course outline: