Southern Polytechnic State University

Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology Program ECET 6302 Laboratory Exercise: TCP/IP Configuration and Ethernet Networks Objective: This laboratory exercise focuses on how to set up the TCP/IP protocol on a PC running the Windows XP Professional operating system and the student will examine the operation of shared and switched Ethernet LANs. Overview: You will set up the TCP/IP protocol stack on a workstation and work with an Ethernet LAN that has several active workstations. The LAN will be isolated from the outside world by disconnecting the interface cable to the campus network. After setting up and testing your TCP/IP connection, you will examine network traffic with a LAN protocol analyzer. You will identify the MAC (hardware) addresses of the workstation Ethernet NICs. You will also test the data rate of a 10Mbps hub and a 100 Mbps switch. Procedure: Installing TCP/IP on a Windows XP Computer Manually: In most situations, a network administrator will use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to automatically configure workstation IP addresses. However, it is important to know how to configure the TCP/IP protocol manually. Important servers will use fixed addresses and the DHCP technique usually does not result in assigning the same address to workstation each time. 1. a) Once the computer has been started and logged into, open the Control Panel: i) Click Start. ii) Click Control Panel. iii) Click Network Connections. b) Right-click the Local Area Connection icon and select Properties. Note: if you have more than one Local Area Connection icon, make sure the one you click on is the one associated with the Ethernet connection from your computer to the lab network. c) The TCP/IP protocol may not appear. If it does not, perform step d), otherwise go to step 2. d) Add the TCP/IP protocol if it is not visible in the Properties box: i) Click Install. ii) Double-click Protocol. iii) Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) from the list and then click OK. After a short time, you will see TCP/IP appear in the Local Area Connection Properties box.

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Assigning the IP Address: 2. The IP address is the identification for a computer on the Internet. a) Click on TCP/IP entry in the Local Area Connection Properties box to highlight it. Then click the Properties button. A properties sheet will appear for the protocol setup. b) The first step is to assign the IP address to the computer. Have your instructor give you an IP address to use. It will be in the form aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd. c) Click Use the following IP address and enter this value in the IP address field IP Address ______.______.______.______ Setting the Subnet Mask: 3. The subnet mask should be set for a Class C range of addresses. Have your instructor give you a subnet mask to use and enter it into the Subnet mask field. Subnet Mask ______.______.______.______ Setting the Default Gateway: 4. The gateway is the device that a computer communicates through, usually in order to get to the rest of the Internet. a) Obtain the value to enter for the default gateway from your instructor. Enter the value under Gateway and click add. Record this value: Gateway ______.______.______.______ Enabling DNS: 5. A DNS server allows a computer to resolve an address to a numeric IP number. This must be done for any connection to be made using TCP/IP. The Host and Domain are used to identify your computer to the DNS server. To establish DNS: a) Select Use the following DNS server addresses. b) Obtain the DNS servers IP address from your instructor. Enter it into the Preferred DNS Server field and click Add. DNS Server ______.______.______.______ Installing Client for Microsoft Networks: 6. A workstation is often part of a domain. When a user logs in to the domain through the workstation, the resources of the domain are available to that user. This procedure will cause a domain login box to appear when the workstation boots up. If the Client for Microsoft Networks already appears, go to step 7. a) Return to the Local Area Connection Properties box. b) With none of the Components highlighted, click Install. c) Click on Client, then Add.

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d) Click on Client for Microsoft Networks, then click OK. After a short time you will be asked to restart your computer. Click Yes to restart. Logging on: 7. Restart your computer if you did not in step 6. Your computer should have rebooted with a logon box. To see where you would specify whether your computer logs on to a workgroup or a domain, do the following. You will not make changes to the settings. a) Right click on My Computer and then click properties. The System Properties box will appear. b) Click on Network Identification. c) Click the Properties button. What is the name of the domain your computer is a member of? Domain or Workgroup Name: _______________________________________________ Testing the TCP/IP Protocol Configuration: 8. Once configuration is complete, it is advisable to test the setup. Two simple utilities that can be used to test TCP/IP; they are: Ipconfig Ping a) Ipconfig is a utility that displays the IP configuration of the computer. The utility must be run from the Command Prompt window. i) Click StartProgramsAccessoriesCommand Prompt. ii) Type ipconfig on the command line. What is displayed? iii) Ipconfig has other capabilities. Type ipconfig /? to see a list of options. Use one of the command line options to find your Ethernet adapters hardware address. Ethernet address: _________________________________________________________ b) Ping is a utility to query a computers status. If a response is returned when ping is executed, the computer is at least powered-up and on the network. No response indicates the computer being pinged is turned off, is not on the network, or has problems of some type. Note that pings are blocked from leaving the campus network and only a few campus addresses can be pinged. i) From a command prompt, type ping. What is displayed (do not list the response)? ii) Type ping localhost. What information is returned? What is the localhost? iii) Ping the IP address specified by your instructor. Record the first three lines from the ping output. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________

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iv) Modify your line to ping the address 20 times. Write that command below. ________________________________________________________________________ Using the Network Services Shell 9. The network services shell (Netsh) is activated from the command prompt and allows you to perform a considerable number of diagnostic queries. The reference at the end of the lab instructions describes the commands you can use in the Netsh. a) First, open the Administrative Tools window in the Control Panel. b) Select Services and ensure that the Routing and Remote Access service is in Manual mode and is Started. c) Open a Command Prompt window and type Netsh at the prompt. The netsh> prompt will appear. d) Type help to show a list of commands to get an idea of what you can do in the Netsh mode. e) Type interface ip show ipaddress at the prompt to display the IP address assigned by DHCP. Was the IP address the same as the one you entered manually? f) Type interface ip show interfaces at the prompt to display interface information. i) Determine the maximum transmission unit for your Ethernet connection ii) Determine the speed of your interface.

Start the Network Analyzer Wireshark is a public-domain network analyzer program originally designed for Linux, but ported to Microsoft Windows. The program is quite useful and available free of charge. It can capture frames on many types of network interface cards and display them in detail. It is also possible to display network performance statistics. Here we will perform a simple capture operation. 10. Start the Wireshark network analyzer. In the following sections you will be asked to examine some of the frames entering and leaving your workstation. You may need to set appropriate capture filters. Your instructor will specify whether to use the Linux or Windows version of Wireshark. a) Start a capture by first clicking CaptureInterfaces. Identify the proper network card from the drop down list and click the Options button next to it. b) In the box that appears, type the following next to Capture Filter: ip and host ip_address
Where ip_address is your workstations IP address. This will capture only IP traffic coming into and out of your workstation.

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Note: you can also select from a list of previously-created capture filters by clicking the Capture Filter: button in the Options window. The Capture Filter: editing box appears and you can select from an existing filter or create and save a new one. c) As an option, you can check the box Update list of packets in real time if you want to see the displayed capture buffer fill up real-time. However, choosing this option may cause missed packets. d) Click Start and the capture will start. e) In the Wireshark window, Clear the display filter if there is one. The display filter information is at the top of the window, just above the capture buffer. Using the Network Analyzer to Determine Ethernet MAC Addresses 11. You will create a table of Ethernet addresses for four of the active workstations in the lab. a. Set up an appropriate capture filter for Wireshark if desired and use the Ping utility to send Ethernet frames to four of the other active workstations in the lab. Ping operates at the IP layer, but an Ethernet frame is created with the Ping packet as the payload. The Ethernet frame will have its own source and destination addresses. b. By capturing the Pings, you can determine the Ethernet addresses of the other workstations as well as your own. Fig. 1 shows the fields in an Ethernet frame. Fill in Table 1 with the workstation addresses. Note that you can also display your ARP cache after performing the pings, which can save some time in constructing your table. The command is arp a. However, the ARP cache does not list the workstation name. Note: a Netsh command can clear the arp cache. At the normal command prompt type netsh interface ip delete arpcache.
46 to 1500 octets 7 octets Preamble 1 SFD 6 Dest Addr 6 Source Addr 2 Len/Type 0 LLC Data 0 Pad 4 FCS

Fig. 1 Ethernet frame format. Table 1. Workstation Ethernet addresses Workstation Name IP Address Ethernet Address

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Determining File Transfer Time on 10Mbps Hub 12. To avoid the effect of collisions on file transfers, your instructor will transfer a large file to another workstation. You will observe the approximate transfer time using the capture time tags Wireshark logs for each frame it captures. a. Each workstation group should create a capture filter with the instructors workstation as the source IP address. b. Have your instructor verify that your filter is correct. c. Your instructor will tell you when to start capturing just before the file transfer takes place. d. At the end of the transfer, stop capturing and display the buffer. e. Also, determine the capture buffer status by displaying the Capture Panel. How many packets were captured? How much of your buffer capacity was used up? Does this affect your capacity calculation? Can you see the acknowledgements from the destination workstation? How would this affect throughput?

f. Using the time tags and the known file size, determine the effective network capacity in bits per second. Start time: End time: File transfer time: Computed network capacity: g) If you missed the file transfer, your instructor will repeat it. Determining File Transfer Time on 100Mbps Switch 13. Move the Ethernet connections of the workstations in part 5 to the 100 Mbps switch. Repeat step 8. Note that this time the instructor will have to send the file directly to each workstation. Why? Start time: End time: File transfer time: Computed network capacity:

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Determining File Transfer Time on 100Mbps Switch Using Iperf Iperf is a utility from the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR) that can be used to measure the throughput and jitter of a network connection using various methods. Here we will use the TCP technique. This command-line utility uses a client-server TCP connection and transfers full size Ethernet payloads in one direction with acknowledgements flowing in the other direction. It calculates the data rate in bits per section of the unidirectional file transfer considering the Ethernet payload only and not the Ethernet frame overhead. 14. Choose a partner workstation and determine who will be the client and who will be the server. a. Open a command prompt on each machine and move to the c:\program files\iperf folder. b. On the server computer type iperf s . c. On the client computer type iperf c ipaddress . Where ipaddress is the address of the server computer. If all is well, the utility will run successfully and calculate the payload data rate in bits per second. Questions: 1. What were the approximate transfer rates in bps for the file transfers across the hub and the switch using the file transfer data from the sniffer? 2. For the 100Mbps switch, how does the Iperf data compare with the results from using the sniffer? If you add the Ethernet frame overhead to the Iperf results, how do they compare? 3. Could all workstations see the file transfer on the switch? Why or why not? 4. Which of the two devices, the switch or hub, has the better security? Why? 5. Write a paragraph explaining the significance of TCP/UDP ports as they relate to Internet-based security. Cite any references. Internet references are OK. Report: Discuss the results obtained in the lab exercise. Answer all questions. Make conclusions regarding your results.

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