Using WireShark (formerly Ethereal)
Required Hardware: You can do this lab exercise on any computer that is connected to the Internet and has Ethereal or WireShark software installed.
Alternately, you can do this lab from the comfort of your own home or laptop by downloading and installing WireShark and installing it on your local PC.
In this lab you will:
1. Execute Wireshark and practice capturing data packets
2. Become familiar with the results from capturing packets for a file download from a web server.
Part 1: Start up Wireshark Capture and select computer IP address
1. Determine the IP address for the Ethernet interface cards of the computer you are using. Start up Wireshark, click Capture→Interfaces and click on the check box under Device corresponding to your active Ethernet interface.
Click on the Start button. Wireshark will begin running in Capture Mode and will open up a Wireshark Capture window showing you how many packets have been captured in real time.
Part 2: Download Web Page
1. With Wireshark still running in Capture Mode, start up your favorite browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox or whatever).
2. Enter the following address: facweb
3. A web page should appear in your browser from the author's home page
4. Close your browser window
5. Go back to the Wireshark Capture window and click the Stop button or
Capture→Stop to stop the packet capture.
Part 3: Verify that the Web Page Download has Been Captured
1. Back in the Wireshark window, you should now see lots of packets in the top summary pane. Filter out all packets except HTTP packets by typing the word "http" into the Filter: box and press Apply or click View→Filter Toolbar if you don't see a Filter box at the top. This will make things much easier to read.
2. You should see a packet containing something like "GET /cwhite / HTTP" sent by your PC to request the web page download.
3. If the next packet listed (containing the reply from the web server to your PC)contains "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" and the next 3 are "Continuation" GET packets,then you have successfully captured the packets containing the lab html web page. Skip the following step 4 and continue to Part 4.
4. On the other hand, if the reply from the web server contains "HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified", then this means Wireshark did not capture the packets from the web site because the web page was already stored (cached) in your browser. In this case you must clear your browser cache and then go back and re-do the capture as follows:
a. First, you must clear the web cache in your browser.
i. For Internet Explorer, click Tools → Internet Options, then, under the General tab, click the Delete Files button within the
Temporary Internet Files box area.
ii. For Firefox, click Tools → Options, then Privacy, Cache and click Clear.
iii. For other browsers, you're on your own.
b. Now in your Wireshark window, again select Capture→Interfaces and click the Capture button corresponding to the Ethernet interface. When prompted whether to save the previous capture, click Continue without saving.
c. Go back to Part 2, step 1 above to download the web page again while Wireshark is capturing packets.
Part 4: What to Hand in
The goal of this lab was primarily to introduce you to Wireshark and practice capturing data packets. The intentions of the following questions is to show that you have been able to run Wireshark and explore some of the capabilities.
Answer the following questions:
1. List at least three different protocols that appears in the protocol column in the unfiltered packet-listing window.
2. How long did it take from when the HTTP GET message was sent until the HTTP OK reply was received? Note: 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 web page
4. What is the Internet address of your computer?
5. Provide screen shots of the HTTP GET and HTTP OK messages that was sent from your computer to HTTP server. Look for an HTTP GET and HTTP OK message in the "listing of captured packets" portion of the Wireshark window that shows "GET /cwhite ".
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 window2.
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.