Sean Bahmani

Project Focus: Learn to use tools like Wireshark to diagnose network issues and view the contents (packets) that are traveling over the network. Also, see the encapsulation and de-encapsulation of a packet throughout the layers.

Contribution / Role: Network Administration/Security

Technology / Skills: Packet Capture Tool (Wireshark), Network Monitoring requiring reading of the packet information, Network Layer Knowledge

Description: The purpose of this project was to learn how to use a packet capture tool, in this case Wireshark, in order to monitor the packets that are flowing over the network. In this case we were limited to the use of our our connection since we did not have access to the Universities hardware. That being said the concept is the same, monitor the packets that are incoming and outgoing and see if there is an issue that needs to be addressed. We spoke of many use cases that this tool can be helpful to a network including: diagnosing bandwidth issues (Bit torrent or non work related downloads/site visits), trouble shooting on your end (internal packet drop issues), software issues (communication with application and the network), etc…

Challenges: Since we did not have access the Universities Network we could only proceed with this lesson on a small scale. Although the data is similar it is a vastly smaller amount of packets that are being monitored. The challenge really comes in when you have to monitor a large network, but again the data that you are receiving is the same. There should be little issue, after the initial awe of the amount of data wears off, to applying this knowledge to a large network situation.

Reflections: This was an extremely useful project as the exposure to such tools is a great opportunity to learn. Even on the small scale I was surprised by just how many packets of information are sent for even just the calling of a web page (due to the extremely formal protocols that are implemented).