Introduction
Filtering allows you to focus on the exact sets of data that you are interested in reading. As you have seen, Wireshark collects everything by default. That can get in the way of the specific data that you are looking for. Wireshark provides two powerful filtering tools to make targeting the exact data you need simple and painless.
There are two way that Wireshark can filter packets. It can filter an only collect certain packets, or the packet results can be filtered after they are collected. Of course, these can be used in conjunction with one another, and their respective usefulness is dependent on which and how much data is being collected.