15+ Best Wireshark Courses & Certifications Online in 2026

Last updated: July 2026. Written by Josh Hutcheson, OnlineCourseing editor. See our review methodology.

QUICK VERDICT

Start the top Wireshark course →

Wireshark captures and decodes the traffic flowing across a network, one packet at a time. It is how you prove what actually happened on the wire — a slow application, a misconfigured handshake, credentials sent in the clear, or a malware beacon phoning home. It is completely free and it is a core skill for network troubleshooting, security analysis, and penetration testing alike.

One important legal note before you start: Wireshark is a legitimate analysis tool, but capturing traffic on networks you do not own or have permission to monitor can break privacy and wiretapping laws. Every course below teaches capture in a lab or on your own network — keep it there.

The best Wireshark courses in 2026

1. Wireshark: Packet Analysis and Ethical Hacking: Core Skills — Udemy (Best overall)

Chris Greer is a Wireshark instructor and packet-analysis consultant who teaches for Wireshark University itself, and it shows. This course is the platform’s best, rated 4.8★ from nearly 9,000 ratings with 245,000+ students (last updated May 2025). You learn to capture and filter traffic, follow TCP and HTTP streams, spot retransmissions and resets, and use Wireshark to identify security issues like cleartext credentials and suspicious connections. If you buy one Wireshark course, buy this one.

What you’ll learn: capture and display filters, following TCP and HTTP streams, reading the handshake, spotting retransmissions and resets, plus the security workflows — surfacing cleartext credentials and suspicious DNS — that make up the ethical-hacking half of the course.

Take this course on Udemy →

2. The Ultimate Wireshark Course — Udemy (Best short second opinion)

The Ultimate Wireshark Course is what to add if Greer’s course leaves you wanting the same material explained a second way. It runs about 3.5 hours and moves briskly from capture basics through display filters and protocol analysis, holding 4.6 stars from 361 ratings. Be clear-eyed about what it is, though: it was last updated in late 2022 and is a fraction of the size of Greer’s course, so treat it as a supplement rather than your only purchase.

What you’ll learn: the interface, capture setup, display-filter syntax, and a walk through the common protocols. A compressed second pass over the fundamentals rather than new ground.

3. Wireshark for Beginners: Capture Packets — Coursera (Best quick hands-on intro)

Wireshark for Beginners: Capture Packets is a short guided project that runs in a browser-based workspace with no local install. In about 90 minutes you capture live traffic, apply filters, and read back what you collected — the fastest way to find out whether packet analysis interests you before committing to a full course. It is rated 4.6 from 146 reviews. One caveat: Coursera guided projects cannot be audited, so this one is covered by a free trial or a Coursera Plus subscription rather than being free outright.

What you’ll learn: starting a live capture in a browser workspace, applying your first filters, and reading back what you collected — enough to know whether packet analysis holds your interest before you spend money.

4. Getting Started with Wireshark — Pluralsight

Getting Started with Wireshark is a structured fundamentals course for Pluralsight subscribers, covering capture, display filters, and everyday troubleshooting like DHCP and client-server exchanges. Solid, if a little older in its interface than Greer’s course.

What you’ll learn: capture basics, display filters, and the everyday troubleshooting patterns you meet first: DHCP exchanges, DNS lookups, and client-server round trips.

5. Digital Networks Essentials — edX

Digital Networks Essentials (IMTx) is not a Wireshark course as such, but the right pick if the packets do not make sense yet. It teaches the networking fundamentals — protocols, addressing, and the OSI layers — that make Wireshark readable. Take this first if you are brand new to networking.

What you’ll learn: the networking layer underneath Wireshark — protocols, addressing, and the OSI model — so that the packets you capture actually mean something.

How we picked these courses

Every course on this list was loaded and checked in a browser in July 2026 — not pulled from an affiliate feed. We confirmed each one is still live and still taught by the instructor named, and we read the current rating and last-updated date rather than repeating what the page said years ago. Where a course is showing its age we say so in the entry rather than quietly leaving it on the list. Two picks were removed from an earlier version of this page for exactly that reason: one had been retired by the platform outright, and one had not been updated since 2016.

What is Wireshark, and who actually needs it?

Wireshark is a free, open-source packet analyser. It captures the raw traffic crossing a network interface and decodes it into something readable — every DNS lookup, TCP handshake, HTTP request, and TLS negotiation, laid out packet by packet with timings. It is the standard tool for answering “what is actually happening on this connection?” once logs and dashboards have run out of answers.

Three groups use it constantly. Network engineers use it to prove where latency, retransmissions, or a failed handshake come from — often to settle whether a fault is the network or the application. Security analysts use it to find cleartext credentials, unusual DNS, and malware beaconing inside a capture. Penetration testers and CTF players use it to inspect protocols and pull artefacts out of traffic. If you are studying for CompTIA Network+, Security+, or the OSCP, packet analysis is on the syllabus regardless.

It is free, and always has been. That is a large part of why it is worth learning: the skill moves with you to any employer, and none of it sits behind a licence.

What you’ll learn with Wireshark

A capable Wireshark course should get you comfortable with all of the following — if one stops at “here is the capture button,” it is too shallow:

• Capturing traffic on the right interface, and using capture filters to keep the volume manageable.
• Display filters — the single most important skill; isolating exactly the packets you care about from millions.
• Following streams — reassembling a full TCP or HTTP conversation to see it as the applications did.
• Reading the TCP handshake and spotting retransmissions, resets, and latency — the core of troubleshooting.
• Security analysis — finding cleartext credentials, odd DNS, and beaconing malware in a trace.
• tshark, Wireshark’s command-line counterpart, for scripting and capturing on servers with no GUI.

Looking for “Wireshark Essential Training” or the LinkedIn Learning courses?

A large share of Wireshark training searches are not for a course to buy at all — they are people hunting one specific LinkedIn Learning title. Here is what those titles actually are, and what to do if you do not have a subscription.

• Wireshark Essential Training — the broad beginner course, taught by Lisa Bock. The usual starting point, and the most-searched of the set.
• Wireshark: Functionality — focused on the tool itself: capture options, profiles, columns, and the display-filter syntax you will use constantly.
• Wireshark: Network Troubleshooting — this is what people are looking for when they search Troubleshooting Your Network with Wireshark. That was the older 2015 title; LinkedIn reorganised its Wireshark library, so searching the old name now returns confusing results.
• Wireshark: Malware and Forensics — the security entry: recognising suspicious traffic and pulling evidence out of a capture.
• Wireshark: Network Traffic Analysis — a learning path stringing several of the above together, rather than a single course.

All of them sit behind a LinkedIn Learning subscription. There is no standalone purchase and no legitimate free download — which matters more here than usual, because searches for a free “download” of these titles lead to pirated copies that are illegal and routinely bundled with malware. Infecting your own machine while trying to learn security is a common and avoidable way to start. If your employer provides LinkedIn Learning, or your public library card does (many do, at no cost), the courses are well produced and worth the time.

If you do not have access, you are not missing anything unavailable elsewhere. Chris Greer’s course above covers the same ground with more current security material as a one-time purchase, and the Coursera guided project has you capturing live packets in about 90 minutes.

Is there a Wireshark certification?

Yes. The WCNA (Wireshark Certified Network Analyst), offered through Wireshark University, is the only certification specific to the tool. It validates deep packet-analysis and protocol knowledge and is respected among network engineers, though it is a niche credential rather than a career-maker on its own. Wireshark skill also feeds broader certifications: it appears in CompTIA Network+ and Security+, and packet analysis is a core competency for the OSCP and most SOC-analyst roles. If a course promises a “Wireshark certificate,” check whether it means the WCNA or just a completion certificate.

How to choose a Wireshark course

Match the course to your goal. For security and ethical hacking, Greer’s Core Skills course is purpose-built. For network troubleshooting, any of the broader courses work — prioritise one that spends real time on display filters and following streams, the two skills you will use daily. And if the OSI model and TCP handshake are still fuzzy, start with a networking foundation (the edX course, or our CompTIA Network+ guide) before diving into packets.

Wireshark courses: frequently asked questions

Is Wireshark hard to learn?

Capturing packets is easy; making sense of them is the skill. The interface is approachable, but reading a trace fluently — knowing which packets matter and why — takes practice. A good course plus a few hours analysing your own traffic gets most people to a useful level within a couple of weeks.

Is it legal to use Wireshark?

Yes, on networks you own or are authorised to monitor. Capturing traffic on networks you do not control — public Wi-Fi, an employer’s network without permission — can violate privacy and wiretapping laws. Keep your practice to your own lab.

Do I need networking knowledge first?

A working grasp of TCP/IP makes Wireshark far easier. If protocols and the OSI model are new to you, take a networking foundation course first — several picks above assume those basics.

What is the WCNA certification?

The Wireshark Certified Network Analyst is the official, tool-specific certification from Wireshark University. It certifies advanced packet-analysis skill and is well regarded among network engineers, though it is a specialist credential rather than a broad career qualification.

Start the top Wireshark course →

How to practise once the course ends

Courses hand you the vocabulary; fluency comes from captures nobody staged for you. Three cheap sources of real practice:

• Your own traffic. Capture sixty seconds of your machine’s traffic and account for every conversation in it. You will find telemetry, update checks, and DNS you did not know about — explaining each one is the exercise.
• The official sample captures. The Wireshark wiki hosts a large library of donated capture files covering protocols you will never see at home. It is the fastest way to practise reading something genuinely unfamiliar.
• Network-forensics challenges. CTF-style pcap puzzles hand you a capture and a question — which host was compromised, what was exfiltrated. This is the closest thing to the actual job, and published write-ups let you check your reasoning afterwards.

One rule throughout: capture only on networks you own or are authorised to monitor. That constraint is the whole difference between a portfolio project and a legal problem.

Is Wireshark free?

Yes. Wireshark is open-source under the GNU GPL and free for personal and commercial use on Windows, macOS, and Linux. There is no paid tier and no licence to buy — the only thing you ever pay for is training. Treat any site charging for a “Wireshark Pro” download as suspect; the official build comes from wireshark.org.

How long does it take to learn Wireshark?

You can capture traffic within an hour. Reading a capture usefully — filtering to the packets that matter and explaining what went wrong — takes most people two to four weeks of intermittent practice alongside a structured course. Real fluency, the kind where you diagnose an intermittent fault from a trace, is measured in months of doing it on live networks.

Wireshark or tcpdump — which should I learn?

Both, in that order. Wireshark’s interface makes it far easier to learn what the protocols look like, because you can see every decoded field. tcpdump is what you actually reach for on a remote server with no desktop — you capture there and analyse the file in Wireshark afterwards. Learning Wireshark first makes tcpdump’s output legible; the reverse is a harder path. Wireshark also ships with tshark, its own command-line version, which bridges the two.