Wireshark Lab:

HTTP v8.1
Supplement to Computer Networking: A Top-Down
Approach, 8th ed., J.F. Kurose and K.W. Ross

“Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me

and I understand.” Chinese proverb

© 2005-2021, J.F Kurose and K.W. Ross, All Rights Reserved

Having gotten our feet wet with the Wireshark packet sniffer in the introductory lab,
we’re now ready to use Wireshark to investigate protocols in operation. In this lab, we’ll
explore several aspects of the HTTP protocol: the basic GET/response interaction, HTTP
message formats, retrieving large HTML files, retrieving HTML files with embedded
objects, and HTTP authentication and security. Before beginning these labs, you might
want to review Section 2.2 of the text.1

1. The Basic HTTP GET/response interaction

Let’s begin our exploration of HTTP by downloading a very simple HTML file - one that
is very short, and contains no embedded objects. Do the following:
1. Start up your web browser.
2. Start up the Wireshark packet sniffer, as described in the Introductory lab (but
don’t yet begin packet capture). Enter “http” (just the letters, not the quotation
marks, and in lower case) in the display-filter-specification window, so that only
captured HTTP messages will be displayed later in the packet-listing window.
(We’re only interested in the HTTP protocol here, and don’t want to see the
clutter of all captured packets).
3. Wait a bit more than one minute (we’ll see why shortly), and then begin
Wireshark packet capture.
4. Enter the following to your browser
http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/HTTP-wireshark-file1.html
Your browser should display the very simple, one-line HTML file.
5. Stop Wireshark packet capture.

1 References to figures and sections are for the 8th edition of our text, Computer Networks, A Top-down
Approach, 8h ed., J.F. Kurose and K.W. Ross, Addison-Wesley/Pearson, 2020. Our authors’ website for
this book is http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose_ross You’ll find lots of interesting open material there.
Your Wireshark window should look similar to the window shown in Figure 1. If you’re
unable to run Wireshark on a live network connection, you can download a packet trace
that was created when the steps above were followed.2

Figure 1: Wireshark Display after http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/ HTTP-

wireshark-file1.html has been retrieved by your browser

The example in Figure 1 shows in the packet-listing window that two HTTP messages
were captured: the GET message (from your browser to the gaia.cs.umass.edu web
server) and the response message from the server to your browser. The packet-contents
window shows details of the selected message (in this case the HTTP OK message,
which is highlighted in the packet-listing window). Recall that since the HTTP message
was carried inside a TCP segment, which was carried inside an IP datagram, which was
carried within an Ethernet frame, Wireshark displays the Frame, Ethernet, IP, and TCP
packet information as well. We want to minimize the amount of non-HTTP data
displayed (we’re interested in HTTP here, and will be investigating these other protocols
is later labs), so make sure the boxes at the far left of the Frame, Ethernet, IP and TCP
information have a plus sign or a right-pointing triangle (which means there is hidden,
undisplayed information), and the HTTP line has a minus sign or a down-pointing
triangle (which means that all information about the HTTP message is displayed).

2 You can download the zip file http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/wireshark-traces-8.1.zip and

extract the trace file http-wireshark-trace1-1. These trace files can be used to answer these Wireshark lab
questions without actually capturing packets on your own. Each trace was made using Wireshark running
on one of the author’s computers, while performing the steps indicated in the Wireshark lab. Once you’ve
downloaded a trace file, you can load it into Wireshark and view the trace using the File pull down menu,
choosing Open, and then selecting the trace file name. The resulting display should look similar to Figure
1 (for the http-wireshark-trace1-1 trace file for this HTTP lab). The Wireshark user interface displays just a
bit differently on different operating systems, and in different versions of Wireshark.
 (Note: You should ignore any HTTP GET and response for favicon.ico. If you see a reference to
this file, it is your browser automatically asking the server if it (the server) has a small icon file
that should be displayed next to the displayed URL in your browser. We’ll ignore references to
this pesky file in this lab.).

By looking at the information in the HTTP GET and response messages, answer the
following questions. If you’re doing this lab as part of class, your teacher will provide
details about how to hand in assignments, whether written or in an LMS.3

1. Is your browser running HTTP version 1.0, 1.1, or 2? What version of HTTP is
the server running?
Yes, version 1.1.

3 For the author’s class, when answering the following questions with hand-in assignments, students print
out the GET and response messages (see the introductory Wireshark lab for an explanation of how to do
this) and indicate where in the message they’ve found the information that answers a question. They do
this by marking paper copies with a pen or annotating electronic copies with text in a colored font. There
are LMS modules for teachers that allow students to answer these questions online and have answers auto-
graded for these Wireshark labs at http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/kurose_ross/lms.htm
2. What languages (if any) does your browser indicate that it can accept to the
server?
zh-TW,zh ; en-US; en;

3. What is the IP address of your computer? What is the IP address of the

gaia.cs.umass.edu server?
My computer IP address is 192.168.0.105
The gaia.cs.umass.edu server IP address is 128.119.245.12
4. What is the status code returned from the server to your browser?
200OK

5. When was the HTML file that you are retrieving last modified at the server?
We can filter message by the http.last_modified and we see that the HTTP
response I received for the html file dosen’t show this field. We do have a
http.last_modified field in the favicon response however, as shown in the
screenshot below. This says the favicon was last modified on Wed, 24 Apr 2024.
 6. How many bytes of content are being returned to your browser?
Content-Length: 128bytes.

7. By inspecting the raw data in the packet content window, do you see any headers
within the data that are not displayed in the packet-listing window? If so, name
one.
No. The raw data appears to match up exactly with what is shown in the packet-
listing window.

In your answer to question 5 above (assuming you’re running Wireshark “live”, as

opposed to using an earlier-recorded trace file), you might have been surprised to find
that the document you just retrieved was last modified within a minute before you
downloaded the document. That’s because (for this particular file), the gaia.cs.umass.edu
server is setting the file’s last-modified time to be the current time, and is doing so once
per minute. Thus, if you wait a minute between accesses, the file will appear to have been
recently modified, and hence your browser will download a “new” copy of the document.

2 Retrieving Long Documents

In our examples thus far, the documents retrieved have been simple and short HTML
files. Let’s next see what happens when we download a long HTML file. Do the
following:
● Start up your web browser, and make sure your browser’s cache is cleared, as
discussed above.
● Start up the Wireshark packet sniffer
 ● Enter the following URL into your browser
http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/HTTP-wireshark-file3.html
Your browser should display the rather lengthy US Bill of Rights.
● Stop Wireshark packet capture, and enter “http” in the display-filter-specification
window, so that only captured HTTP messages will be displayed.

In the packet-listing window, you should see your HTTP GET message, followed by a
multiple-packet TCP response to your HTTP GET request. Make sure you your
Wireshark display filter is cleared so that the multi-packet TCP response will be
displayed in the packet listing.

This multiple-packet response deserves a bit of explanation. Recall from Section 2.2 (see
Figure 2.9 in the text) that the HTTP response message consists of a status line, followed
by header lines, followed by a blank line, followed by the entity body. In the case of our
HTTP GET, the entity body in the response is the entire requested HTML file. In our
case here, the HTML file is rather long, and at 4500 bytes is too large to fit in one TCP
packet. The single HTTP response message is thus broken into several pieces by TCP,
with each piece being contained within a separate TCP segment (see Figure 1.24 in the
text). In recent versions of Wireshark, Wireshark indicates each TCP segment as a
separate packet, and the fact that the single HTTP response was fragmented across
multiple TCP packets is indicated by the “TCP segment of a reassembled PDU” in the
Info column of the Wireshark display.

Answer the following questions4:

4 If you’re unable to run Wireshark on a live network connection, you can download the zip file
http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/wireshark-traces-8.1.zip and extract the trace file http-
wireshark-trace3-1.
8. How many HTTP GET request messages did your browser send? Which packet
number in the trace contains the GET message for the Bill or Rights?
My bowser only sent 1 HTTP HET request to the server. The Packet that
contained the GET message was packet number 197.

9. Which packet number in the trace contains the status code and phrase associated
with the response to the HTTP GET request?
The packet number is 204.
 10. What is the status code and phrase in the response?
200OK.

11. How many data-containing TCP segments were needed to carry the single HTTP
response and the text of the Bill of Rights?
4TCP segments, then reassembled.

3. HTML Documents with Embedded Objects

Now that we’ve seen how Wireshark displays the captured packet traffic for large HTML
files, we can look at what happens when your browser downloads a file with embedded
objects, i.e., a file that includes other objects (in the example below, image files) that are
stored on another server(s).

Do the following:
● Start up your web browser, and make sure your browser’s cache is cleared, as
discussed above.
● Start up the Wireshark packet sniffer

● Enter the following URL into your browser

http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/HTTP-wireshark-file4.html
Your browser should display a short HTML file with two images. These two
images are referenced in the base HTML file. That is, the images themselves are
not contained in the HTML; instead the URLs for the images are contained in the
downloaded HTML file. As discussed in the textbook, your browser will have to
retrieve these logos from the indicated web sites. Our publisher’s logo is
retrieved from the gaia.cs.umass.edu web site. The image of our 8th edition
cover (one of our favorite covers) is stored at a server in France.
● Stop Wireshark packet capture, and enter “http” in the display-filter-specification
window, so that only captured HTTP messages will be displayed.

Answer the following questions5:

5 If you’re unable to run Wireshark on a live network connection, you can download the zip file
http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/wireshark-traces-8.1.zip and extract the trace file http-
wireshark-trace4-1.
 12. How many HTTP GET request messages did your browser send? To which
Internet addresses were these GET requests sent?
3 HTTP GET request message sent. Internet address is 128.119.245.12 and
178.79.137.164.

4 HTTP Authentication
Finally, let’s try visiting a web site that is password-protected and examine the sequence
of HTTP message exchanged for such a site. The URL
http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/protected_pages/HTTP-wireshark-file5.html is
password protected. The username is “wireshark-students” (without the quotes), and the
password is “network” (again, without the quotes). So let’s access this “secure”
password-protected site. Do the following:
● Make sure your browser’s cache is cleared, as discussed above, and close down
your browser. Then, start up your browser
● Start up the Wireshark packet sniffer

● Enter the following URL into your browser

http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/protected_pages/HTTP-wireshark-
file5.html
Type the requested user name and password into the pop up box.
● Stop Wireshark packet capture, and enter “http” in the display-filter-specification
window, so that only captured HTTP messages will be displayed later in the
packet-listing window.
 ● Note: If you are unable to run Wireshark on a live network connection, you can
use the “classic” http-ethereal-trace-5 packet trace, or other additional traces, as
notes in footnote 2, to answer the questions below.

Now let’s examine the Wireshark output. You might want to first read up on HTTP
authentication by reviewing the easy-to-read material on “HTTP Access Authentication
Framework” at http://frontier.userland.com/stories/storyReader$2159

Answer the following questions6:

13. What is the server’s response (status code and phrase) in response to the initial
HTTP GET message from your browser?
Status code is 401 Unauthorized.

6 If you’re unable to run Wireshark on a live network connection, you can download the zip file
http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/wireshark-traces-8.1.zip and extract the trace file http-
wireshark-trace5-1.
 14. When your browser’s sends the HTTP GET message for the second time, what
new field is included in the HTTP GET message?
Authorization: Basic d2lyZXNoYXJrLXN0dWRlbnRzOm5ldHdvcms=\r\n

The username (wireshark-students) and password (network) that you entered are encoded
in the string of characters (d2lyZXNoYXJrLXN0dWRlbnRzOm5ldHdvcms=) following
the “Authorization: Basic” header in the client’s HTTP GET message. While it
may appear that your username and password are encrypted, they are simply encoded in a
format known as Base64 format. The username and password are not encrypted! To see
this, go to http://www.motobit.com/util/base64-decoder-encoder.asp and enter the
base64-encoded string d2lyZXNoYXJrLXN0dWRlbnRz and decode. Voila! You have
translated from Base64 encoding to ASCII encoding, and thus should see your username!
To view the password, enter the remainder of the string Om5ldHdvcms= and press
decode. Since anyone can download a tool like Wireshark and sniff packets (not just
their own) passing by their network adaptor, and anyone can translate from Base64 to
ASCII (you just did it!), it should be clear to you that simple passwords on WWW sites
are not secure unless additional measures are taken.

Fear not! As we will see in Chapter 8, there are ways to make WWW access more secure.
However, we’ll clearly need something that goes beyond the basic HTTP authentication
framework!