If you want to practice "Blue Teaming," this site offers regular exercises with PCAPs containing actual malware samples in a controlled lab environment.
A legendary resource in the forensics community, NetRESEC provides an exhaustive list of public PCAP datasets, including industrial control systems (ICS) and SCADA traffic.
For advanced users, the Security Onion Documentation provides links to forensic puzzles and intrusion detection datasets. How to Use Your Downloaded PCAP download pcap for wireshark
The internet hosts several reputable repositories where you can find PCAP samples ranging from basic web traffic to complex malware infections.
This is the definitive "first stop." It contains a massive collection of captures categorized by protocol (TCP, HTTP, DNS) and even includes rare traffic samples for testing specific dissectors. If you want to practice "Blue Teaming," this
Known for its clean, protocol-specific captures, this is a great place to download samples if you want to see exactly what a "clean" BGP or OSPF handshake looks like.
Downloading a Packet Capture (PCAP) file is the first step toward mastering network analysis, whether you're a cybersecurity student or a seasoned sysadmin. While Wireshark is the industry-standard tool for viewing these files, finding high-quality, safe, and diverse data sets to practice with is often the bigger challenge. How to Use Your Downloaded PCAP The internet
Once you have saved a .pcap or .pcapng file to your computer, getting it into Wireshark is straightforward: SampleCaptures - Wireshark Wiki