Take a Custom Application Packet Capture
Focus
Focus

Take a Custom Application Packet Capture

Table of Contents
End-of-Life (EoL)

Take a Custom Application Packet Capture

You can configure a Palo Alto Networks firewall to take a packet capture based on an application name and filters that you define. You can then use the packet capture to troubleshoot issues with controlling an application. When configuring an application packet capture, you must use the application name defined in the App-ID database. You can view a list of all App-ID applications using Applipedia or from the web interface on the firewall in ObjectsApplications.
  1. Using a terminal emulation application, such as PuTTY, launch an SSH session to the firewall.
  2. Turn on the application packet capture and define filters.
    admin@PA-220>set application dump on application <application-name> rule <rule-name>
    For example, to capture packets for the facebook-base application that matches the security rule named rule1, run the following CLI command:
    admin@PA-220>set application dump on application facebook-base rule rule1
    You can also apply other filters, such as source IP address and destination IP address.
  3. View the output of the packet capture settings to ensure that the correct filters are applied. The output appears after enabling the packet capture.
    In the following output, you see that application filtering is now on based on the facebook-base application for traffic that matches rule1.
    Application setting:
    	Application cache : yes
    	Supernode : yes
    	Heuristics : yes
    	Cache Threshold : 16
    	Bypass when exceeds queue limit: no
    	Traceroute appid : yes
    	Traceroute TTL threshold : 30
    	Use cache for appid : no
    	Unknown capture : on
    	Max. unknown sessions : 5000
    	Current unknown sessions : 0 
    	Application capture : on
    	Max. application sessions : 5000 
    	Current application sessions : 0
    	Application filter setting: 
    	Rule : rule1 
    	From : any
    	To : any 
    	Source : any 
    	Destination : any 
    	Protocol : any 
    	Source Port : any
    	Dest. Port : any 
    	Application : facebook-base 
    	Current APPID Signature
    	Signature Usage : 21 MB (Max. 32 MB)
    	TCP 1 C2S : 15503 states 
    	TCP 1 S2C : 5070 states 
    	TCP 2 C2S : 2426 states 
    	TCP 2 S2C : 702 states 
    	UDP 1 C2S : 11379 states 
    	UDP 1 S2C : 2967 states 
    	UDP 2 C2S : 755 states 
    	UDP 2 S2C : 224 states
  4. Access Facebook.com from a web browser to generate Facebook traffic and then turn off application packet capture by running the following CLI command:
    admin@PA-220>set application dump off
  5. View/export the packet capture.
    1. Log in to the web interface on the firewall and select MonitorLogsTraffic.
    2. In the log entry that you are interested in, click the green packet capture icon
      in the second column.
    3. View the packet capture directly or Export it to your computer. The following screen capture shows the facebook-base packet capture.