Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 1

Lab 5:
Wireshark: Exploring TCP
Gayatri
0878834
Computer network and security
IT-6003-7B3-24/SP
Prof. Hoell
04/21/2024
Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 2

1. What is the IP address and TCP port number used by the client computer (source) that is
transferring the file to gaia.cs.umass.edu? To answer this question, it’s probably easiest to
select an HTTP message and explore the details of the TCP packet used to carry this
HTTP message, using the “details of the selected packet header window” (refer to Figure
2 in the “Getting Started with Wireshark” Lab if you’re uncertain about the Wireshark
windows.

Answer: The IP address is 192.168.1.102. The TCP port number is 1161.

2. What is the IP address of gaia.cs.umass.edu? On what port number is it sending and

Answer: The IP address of gaia.cs.umass.edu is 128.119.245.12. The port number is 80.

3. What is the IP address and TCP port number used by your client computer (source) to
transfer the file to gaia.cs.umass.edu?

Answer: The port number used by my client computer is 1161 to transfer the file to
gaia.cs.umass.edu. The IP address is 192.168.1.102.

4. What is the sequence number of the TCP SYN segment that is used to initiate the TCP
connection between the client computer and gaia.cs.umass.edu? What is it in the segment
that identifies the segment as a SYN segment?

Answer: The client computer and gaia.cs.umass.edu establish a TCP connection using the
sequence number of the TCP SYN section. The value is 0 in this trace. The SYN flag is set to 1.
It signifies that this is a SYN segment.
Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 3

5. What is the sequence number of the SYNACK segment sent by gaia.cs.umass.edu to the
client computer in reply to the SYN? What is the value of the Acknowledgement field in
the SYNACK segment? How did gaia.cs.umass.edu determine that value? What is it in
the segment that identifies the segment as a SYNACK segment?

Answer: The SYNACK segment's sequence number from gaia.cs.umass.edu to the client
machine in response to the SYN has a value of 0.
the Acknowledgement field has a value of 1 in the SYNACK segment. The SYNACK segment's
Acknowledgement field value is determined by gaia.cs.umass.edu by adding 1 to the SYN
segment's initial sequence number obtained from source device. This is a SYNACK segment
because both the SYN and the Acknow ledgment flags are set to 1.
Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 4

6. What is the sequence number of the TCP segment containing the HTTP POST
command? Note that to find the POST command, you’ll need to dig into the packet
content field at the bottom of the Wireshark window, looking for a segment with a
“POST” within its DATA field.

Answer: No. 199 segment is the TCP segment containing the HTTP POST command. The
sequence number of the TCP segment containing the HTTP POST command is 164041.
Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 5

7. Consider the TCP segment containing the HTTP POST as the first segment in the TCP
connection. What are the sequence numbers of the first six segments in the TCP
connection (including the segment containing the HTTP POST)? At what time was each
segment sent? When was the ACK for each segment received? Given the difference
between when each TCP segment was sent, and when its acknowledgement was received,
what is the RTT value for each of the six segments? What is the EstimatedRTT value (see
Section 3.5.3, page 242 in text) after the receipt of each ACK? Assume that the value of
the EstimatedRTT is equal to the measured RTT for the first segment, and then is
computed using the EstimatedRTT equation on page 242 for all subsequent segments.

Note: Wireshark has a nice feature that allows you to plot the RTT for each of the TCP segments
sent. Select a TCP segment in the “listing of captured packets” window that is being sent from
the client to the gaia.cs.umass.edu server. Then select: Statistics->TCP Stream Graph- >Round
Trip Time Graph.

Answer: The first segment is regarded as the HTTP POST segment. In this tracing, the numbers
4, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 11 correspond to segments 1 through 6. In this trace, ACKs 6, 9, 12, 14, 15,
and 16 correspond to segments 1 through 6.

Segment containing the HTTP POST:

Sent time: 0.026477.

Segment 2:
Sequence number: 566.
Sent time: 0.041737.
Ack received time: 0.077294.
RTT: 0.035557.
Estimated RTT: 0.0285.

Segment 3:
Sequence number: 2026.
Sent time: 0.054026.
Ack received time: 0.124085.
RTT: 0.070059.
Estimated RTT: 0.0337.

Segment 4:
Sequence number: 3486.
Sent time: 0.054690.
Ack received time: 0.169118.
RTT: 0.11443.
Estimated RTT: 0.0438.

Segment 5:
Sequence number: 4946.
Sent time: 0.077405.
Ack received time: 0.217299.
RTT: 0.13989.
Estimated RTT: 0.0558.

Segment 6:
Sequence number: 6406.
Sent time: 0.078157.
Ack received time: 0.267802.
RTT: 0.18964.
Estimated RTT: 0.0725.
Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 7
Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 8

8. What is the length of each of the first six TCP segments?

Answer: Length of the first TCP segment (containing the HTTP POST): 565 bytes Length of
each of the other five TCP segments: 1460 bytes (MSS).

9. What is the minimum amount of available buffer space advertised at the received for the
entire trace? Does the lack of receiver buffer space ever throttle the sender?

Answer: The minimum buffer space (receiver window) stated at gaia.cs.umass.edu for the whole
trace is 5840 bytes, according to the server's initial acknowledgement. This receiver window
steadily grows up to a maximum receiver buffer size of 62780 bytes. This trace can be examined
to see that the sender is never throttled since the receiver buffer is not large enough.
Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 9

10. Are there any retransmitted segments in the trace file? What did you check for (in the
trace) to answer this question?

Answer: The trace file contains no segments that were retransmitted. By looking up the TCP
segment sequence numbers in the trace file, we can confirm this. All sequence numbers from the
source (192.168.1.102) to the destination (128.119.245.12) increase monotonically with time,
according to the Time-Sequence-Graph (Stevens) of this trace. Should a segment be
retransmitted, its sequence number need to be lower than that of the segments that surround it.
Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 10

11. How much data does the receiver typically acknowledge in an ACK? Can you identify
cases where the receiver is ACKing every other received segment (see Table 3.2 on page
250 in the text).

Answer: In an ack, the recipient typically acknowledges 1460 bytes. Whenever the data is
doubled, and the segments are acknowledging each other.

12. What is the throughput (bytes transferred per unit time) for the TCP connection? Explain
how you calculated this value.

Answer: Total data are 164091 - 1 = 164090 bytes (total amount data transmitted can be
computed by the difference between the sequence number of the first TCP segment and the
acknowledged sequence number of the last ACK)

Total transmission time is 5.455830 - 0.026477 = 5.4294 seconds (The whole transmission time
is the difference of the time instant of the first TCP segment and the time instant of the last
ACK)

Throughput for the TCP connection = 164090/5.4294 = 30.222 Kbyte/sec.

13. Use the Time-Sequence-Graph (Stevens) plotting tool to view the sequence number
versus time plot of segments being sent from the client to the gaia.cs.umass.edu server.
Can you identify where TCP’s slow start phase begins and ends, and where congestion
avoidance takes over? Comment on ways in which the measured data differs from the
idealized behavior of TCP that we’ve studied in the text.

Answer: The graph indicates that the slow start phase starts at zero and lasts for about.15
seconds, at which point congestion takes over. Rather than using 1/3 to a half of the window size,
the measured data only uses a small portion of it.
Lab 5(Wireshark): Exploring TCP 12

14. Answer each of two questions above for the trace that you have gathered when you
transferred a file from your computer to gaia.cs.umass.edu.

Answer: All questions were answered.