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Lab 11.2.4 Protocol Inspector, TCP and HTTP

This lab examines TCP operations like the three-way handshake, acknowledgments, segmentation, sequence numbers, and sliding windows using protocol analysis software to capture HTTP traffic during a web request. The analysis shows how TCP establishes and manages connections and data transfer at the transport layer.

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63 views3 pages

Lab 11.2.4 Protocol Inspector, TCP and HTTP

This lab examines TCP operations like the three-way handshake, acknowledgments, segmentation, sequence numbers, and sliding windows using protocol analysis software to capture HTTP traffic during a web request. The analysis shows how TCP establishes and manages connections and data transfer at the transport layer.

Uploaded by

amna mukhtar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lab 11.2.

4 Protocol Inspector, TCP and HTTP

Objective
The objective of this lab is to use Protocol Inspector, or equivalent software, to view dynamic
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) operations. The operation that will be specifically looked at is
HTTP during web page access.

Background / Preparation
Protocol analysis software has a feature called capture. This feature allows all frames through an
interface to be captured for analysis. With this feature, it is possible to see how the TCP moves
segments filled with user data across the network. TCP may seem to be a bit abstract, but the
protocol analyzer shows just how important TCP is to network processes such as e-mail and web
browsing.
At least one of the hosts must have the Protocol Inspector software installed. If the lab is done in
pairs, having the software installed on both machines means that each person can run the lab steps.
However, each host may display slightly different results.

Step 1 Start Protocol Inspector and your browser


Step 2 Go to detail view
Step 3 Start a capture
Step 4 Request a Web Page
Step 5 Watch the monitor view while the web page is requested and delivered
Step 6 Stop the capture
Step 7 Study the TCP frames, HTTP frames, and statistics using various views, especially
the detail view
Step 8 using the detail view, explain what evidence it provides about the following:
• TCP handshakes
Actually, TCP uses the 3-way handshake process to establish a connection
between two devices before transmitting the data. After the establishment of the
connection, the data transfer takes place between the devices. This 3-way
handshake process is also designed so that both ends can initiate and negotiate
separate TCP socket connections at the same time.

• TCP acknowledgments
The internet's Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is an example of an
acknowledgment-based protocol. When computers communicate via TCP,
received packets are acknowledged by sending back a packet with an ACK bit
set. The TCP protocol allows these acknowledgments to be included with data
that is sent in the opposite direction.

• TCP segmentation and segment size


A TCP segment consists of data bytes to be sent and a header that is added to
the data by TCP as shown: The header of a TCP segment can range from 20-60
bytes. 40 bytes are for options. If there are no options, a header is 20 bytes else
it can be of upmost 60 bytes.

• TCP sequence numbers


The TCP sequence number is four bytes long, it identifies each byte in a TCP
stream uniquely. TCP connection has two streams one in each direction.

• TCP sliding windows


The sliding window (windowing) technique is used by Transmission Control
Protocol (TCP) to manage the flow of packets between two computers or
network hosts. TCP is a core component of the Internet Protocol suite and
operates at the transport layer.

• HTTP protocol

HTTP is an application layer protocol designed within the framework of the


Internet protocol suite. Its definition presumes an underlying and reliable
transport layer protocol, and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is commonly
used. HTTP is abbreviated as Hypertext Transfer Protocol, an application layer
protocol used primarily with the WWW (World Wide Web) in the client-server
model where a web browser is a client communicating with the webserver which
is hosting the website. Since 1990, this has become the foundation for data
communication.

1 - 2 CCNA 1: Networking Basics v 3.0 – Lab11.2.4 Copyright  2003, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Reflection
How did this lab help to visualize the TCP protocol in action?
_________________________________________________________________________________
In this lab, we’ll investigate the behavior of the celebrated TCP protocol in detail. We’ll do
so by analyzing a trace of the TCP segments sent and received in transferring a 150KB file
(containing the text of Lewis Carrols’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) from your
computer to a remote server. One method to understand how different TCP versions
(implemented on different machines and OS) operate is to collect packet traces under
different traffic conditions (degrees of congestion) and see how the protocols behave. In
this part of the assignment you will learn about how time-sequence graphs can be used for
this task. Modern machines today are typically using CUBIC TCP, and some older
Microsoft machines are using an extension to Reno called Compound TCP that use a
combination of losses and delay measurements to adjust the congestion
window._________________________________________________________________________
________
2 - 2 CCNA 1: Networking Basics v 3.0 – Lab11.2.4 Copyright  2003, Cisco Systems, Inc.

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