Lab 01: Computer Networks Lab

Statement Purpose:
 Get acquainted with Wireshark
 Make some simple packet captures and observations

Activity outcomes:
 Students will have gained the basic understanding of Wireshark Packet Sniffer to see
“protocols in action”
 After this lab, students will have developed basic understanding of digging deep into
the network protocols.

Instructor Note:
 In this first Wireshark lab, you’ll get acquainted with Wireshark, and make some simple
packet captures and observations.

Activity Time boxing

Table 1: Activity Time Activity Name Activity time Total Time
Boxing Task No.
1 Introduction 15 mins 15 mins
2 Setting-up Wireshark 5 mins 5 mins
3 Walkthrough Task 30 mins 25 mins
4 Practice tasks 25 + 25 + 30 (mins) 80 mins
5 Evaluation 45 min 45 mins
Total Time 170 Minutes

Introduction:
One’s understanding of network protocols can often be greatly deepened by “seeing protocols
in action” and by “playing around with protocols” – observing the sequence of messages
exchanged between two protocol entities, delving down into the details of protocol operation,
and causing protocols to perform certain actions and then observing these actions and their
consequences. This can be done in simulated scenarios or in a “real” network environment such
as the Internet. In the Wireshark labs you’ll be doing in this course, you’ll be running various
network applications in different scenarios using your own computer (or you can borrow a
friends; let me know if you don’t have access to a computer where you can install/run
Wireshark). You’ll observe the network protocols in your computer “in action,” interacting and
exchanging messages with protocol entities executing elsewhere in the Internet. Thus, you and
your computer will be an integral part of these “live” labs. You’ll observe, and you’ll learn, by
doing.
Lab Activities:
Getting Wireshark
Install Wireshark. See http://www.wireshark.org/download.html for a list of supported
operating systems and download sites Download and install the Wireshark software:
 Go to http://www.wireshark.org/download.html and download and install the Wireshark
binary for your computer.
 The Wireshark FAQ has a number of helpful hints and interesting tidbits of information,
particularly if you have trouble installing or running Wireshark.
Running Wireshark:
When you run the Wireshark program, you’ll get a startup screen, as shown below:

Figure 1: Initial Wireshark Screen

Take a look at the upper left hand side of the screen – you’ll see an “Interface list”. This is the
list of network interfaces on your computer. Once you choose an interface, Wireshark will
capture all packets on that interface. In the example above, there is an Ethernet interface
(Gigabit network Connection) and a wireless interface (“Microsoft”).
If you click on one of these interfaces to start packet capture (i.e., for Wireshark to begin
capturing all packets being sent to/from that interface), a screen like the one below will be
displayed, showing information about the packets being captured. Once you start packet
capture, you can stop it by using the Capture pull down menu and selecting Stop.

Figure 2: Wireshark Graphical User Interface, during packet capture and analysis
The Wireshark interface has five major components:
 The command menus are standard pulldown menus located at the top of the window. Of
interest to us now are the File and Capture menus. The File menu allows you to save
captured packet data or open a file containing previously captured packet data, and exit the
Wireshark application. The Capture menu allows you to begin packet capture.
 The packet-listing window displays a one-line summary for each packet captured, including
the packet number (assigned by Wireshark; this is not a packet number contained in any
protocol’s header), the time at which the packet was captured, the packet’s source and
destination addresses, the protocol type, and protocol-specific information contained in the
packet. The packet listing can be sorted according to any of these categories by clicking on a
 column name. The protocol type field lists the highest-level protocol that sent or received
this packet, i.e., the protocol that is the source or ultimate sink for this packet.
 The packet-header details window provides details about the packet selected (highlighted)
in the packet-listing window. (To select a packet in the packet-listing window, place the
cursor over the packet’s one-line summary in the packet-listing window and click with the
left mouse button.). These details include information about the Ethernet frame (assuming
the packet was sent/received over an Ethernet interface) and IP datagram that contains this
packet. The amount of Ethernet and IP-layer detail displayed can be expanded or minimized
by clicking on the plus minus boxes to the left of the Ethernet frame or IP datagram line in
the packet details window. If the packet has been carried over TCP or UDP, TCP or UDP
details will also be displayed, which can similarly be expanded or minimized. Finally, details
about the highest-level protocol that sent or received this packet are also provided.
 The packet-contents window displays the entire contents of the captured frame, in both
ASCII and hexadecimal format.
 Towards the top of the Wireshark graphical user interface, is the packet display filter field,
into which a protocol name or other information can be entered in order to filter the
information displayed in the packet-listing window (and hence the packet-header and
packet-contents windows). In the example below, we’ll use the packet-display filter field to
have Wireshark hide (not display) packets except those that correspond to HTTP messages.
Activity:
 The best way to learn about any new piece of software is to try it out! We’ll assume that
your computer is connected to the Internet via a wired Ethernet interface. Indeed, I
recommend that you do this first lab on a computer that has a wired Ethernet
connection, rather than just a wireless connection. Do the following
1. Start up your favorite web browser, which will display your selected homepage.

2. Start up the Wireshark software. You will initially see a window similar to that shown in
Figure 2. Wireshark has not yet begun capturing packets.

3. To begin packet capture, select the Capture pull down menu and select Interfaces. This will
cause the “Wireshark: Capture Interfaces” window to be displayed, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 3: Wireshark Capture Interface Window

4. You’ll see a list of the interfaces on your computer as well as a count of the packets that have
been observed on that interface so far. Click on Start for the interface on which you want to
begin packet capture (in the case, the Gigabit network Connection). Packet capture will now
begin - Wireshark is now capturing all packets being sent/received from/by your computer!

5. Once you begin packet capture, a window similar to that shown in Figure 3 will appear. This
window shows the packets being captured. By selecting Capture pulldown menu and selecting
Stop, you can stop packet capture. But don’t stop packet capture yet. Let’s capture some
interesting packets first. To do so, we’ll need to generate some network traffic. Let’s do so using
a web browser, which will use the HTTP protocol that we will study in detail in class to
download content from a website.

6. While Wireshark is running, enter the URL: http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/INTRO-

wireshark-file1.html and have that page displayed in your browser. In order to display this page,
your browser will contact the HTTP server at gaia.cs.umass.edu and exchange HTTP messages
with the server in order to download this page, as discussed in section 2.2 of the text. The
Ethernet frames containing these HTTP messages (as well as all other frames passing through
your Ethernet adapter) will be captured by Wireshark.

7. after your browser has displayed the INTRO-wireshark-file1.html page (it is a simple one line
of congratulations), stop Wireshark packet capture by selecting stop in the Wireshark capture
window. The main Wireshark window should now look similar to Figure 3. You now have live
packet data that contains all protocol messages exchanged between your computer and other
network entities! The HTTP message exchanges with the gaia.cs.umass.edu web server should
appear somewhere in the listing of packets captured. But there will be many other types of
packets displayed as well (see, e.g., the many different protocol types shown in the Protocol
column in Figure 3). Even though the only action you took was to download a web page, there
were evidently many other protocols running on your computer that are unseen by the user.
We’ll learn much more about these protocols as we progress through the text! For now, you
should just be aware that there is often much more going on than “meet’s the eye”!

8. Type in “http” (without the quotes, and in lower case – all protocol names are in lower case
in Wireshark) into the display filter specification window at the top of the main Wireshark
window. Then select Apply (to the right of where you entered “http”). This will cause only HTTP
message to be displayed in the packet-listing window.

9. Find the HTTP GET message that was sent from your computer to the gaia.cs.umass.edu
HTTP server. (Look for an HTTP GET message in the “listing of captured packets” portion of the
Wireshark window (see Figure 3) that shows “GET” followed by the gaia.cs.umass.edu URL that
you entered. When you select the HTTP GET message, the Ethernet frame, IP datagram, TCP
segment, and HTTP message header information will be displayed in the packet-header
window1. By clicking on ‘+’ and ‘-‘ right-pointing and down-pointing arrowheads to the left side
of the packet details window, minimize the amount of Frame, Ethernet, Internet Protocol, and
Transmission Control Protocol information displayed. Maximize the amount information
displayed about the HTTP protocol. Your Wireshark display should now look roughly (Note, in
particular, the minimized amount of protocol information for all protocols except HTTP, and the
maximized amount of protocol information for HTTP in the packet-header window). 1 Recall
The goal of this first lab was primarily to introduce you to Wireshark. The following questions
will demonstrate that you’ve been able to get Wireshark up and running, and have explored
some of its capabilities. Answer the following questions, based on your Wireshark
experimentation:
1. List 3 different protocols that appear in the protocol column in the unfiltered packet-listing
window in step 7 above.
2. How long did it take from when the HTTP GET message was sent until the HTTP OK reply was
received? (By default, the value of the Time column in the packet-listing window is the amount
of time, in seconds, since Wireshark tracing began. To display the Time field in time-of-day
format, select the Wireshark View pull down menu, then select Time Display Format, then
select Time-of-day.)
3. What is the Internet address of the gaia.cs.umass.edu (also known as www-
net.cs.umass.edu)? What is the Internet address of your computer?
4. Print the two HTTP messages (GET and OK) referred to in question 2 above. To do so, select
Print from the Wireshark File command menu, and select the “Selected Packet Only” and “Print
as displayed” radial buttons, and then click OK.

Practice Task 1:
 Start a new capture, and do some arbitrary web browsing, such as visiting some
Wikipedia articles, reading some news, etc. Note down all the protocols used at each
layer.
Practice Task 2:
 Ping any website through CMD commands and observe the response on CMD and Wireshark.
1. IP address associated with that URL
2.  size of the packets being sent on the first line
3.  time (in milliseconds) it took for the response
4. the time-to-live (TTL) of the packet
Further Reading:
 Text Books
Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet, by
James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross, 8th Edition

 Reference Books
Data Communication and Networking by Behrouz A. Forouzan (Latest Edition)
Data and Computer Communication by William Stallings 8th Edition by
Pearson Education International 2007