SY110- Lab

Network Traffic Analysis

Learning Outcomes

After completing these activities you should be able to:

  • Access the VDE
  • Access the Wireshark application
  • Analyze previously captured network traffic for ARP, ICMP, DNS, HTTP, and HTTPS communications
  • Assess TCP/IP stack information using packet analysis
  • Observe differences in secure and unsecure network traffic


Lab Overview

In this lab, you will continue exploring computer networking with a tool called Wireshark, observing networking protocols in action. This should deepen your understanding of how key concepts from the networking stack - such as MAC addresses, IP addresses, and ports - are formatted into usable pieces of data (frame, packet, segment/datagram) as they travel across a network. We will specifically look at examples of ARP, ICMP, DNS, HTTP, and HTTPS traffic in today's lab.

Specific lab directions are posted in Blackboard. Most actions will be performed through virtual machines using the vSphere Client. You may also wish to reiew lectures on the network stack.