A Remotely Accessible Network Laboratory 
TCP/IP Laboratories

Draft Laboratory Assignments

The following laboratory assignments should be be viewed as works in progress.  Instructors are given permission to freely use these in their classes adapting them as needed for instructional purposes.  However, instructors may not further distribute them beyond their personal immediate instructional needs.  All other rights are retained. 

(Clarification on two points: Reposting these materials on a web server that does not limit access to the students falling within an instructor's immediate instructional needs (students formally enrolled in a class the instructor is teaching) is considered republication and is not permitted under this agreement.  Any redistribution should cite the source of the original materials.)

These labs are designed to use a very simple network described here (link coming soon).  However, you may find it necessary to adapt them to the equipment you have available.  Consequently, these documents are supplied in Microsoft Word format.

While each laboratory begins with a brief review of material, it is assumed that students are already familiar with the concepts presented.

Lab 1: Connecting to the Networking Laboratory—This lab deals with remote connectivity and includes connecting to the remote server using TELNET, SSH, and VNC.  The use of SSH and VNC is basic to all subsequent laboratories.

Lab 2: IP Addresses—This lab is a review of basic configuration parameters related to IP addresses.  The lab centers on interpreting IP address information.

Lab 3: tcpdump—This lab introduces the use of tcpdump, capture filters, and decoding packet capture information.

Lab 4: Ethereal—This lab is largely a repeat of Lab 3 using Ethereal, a GUI-based capture tool that will fully decode most packets. Use of Ethereal is basic to subsequent laboratories.

Lab 5: ping—This lab introduces the ping utility.  In addition to using ping to investigate connectivity, it is used to estimate the bandwidth of a channel.  The utility pchar is also introduced.

Lab 6: traceroute—This lab deals with the use of the traceroute utility to create maps of paths through networks.

Lab 7: ARP—This lab investigates the operation of the Address Resolution Protocol.

Lab 8: Name Resolution—This lab investigates host tables, the Domain Name Services Protocol, and the nslookup utility.

Lab 9: Ports—This lab investigates port numbers, socket pairs, and port scanning.  The netstat utility is introduced.

Lab 10: Email Protocols—This lab introduces email protocols using SMTP and POP3.  It tries to draw a distinction between the application level in the OSI model and applications that use the application level.

Lab 11: FTP—This lab examines the File Transfer Protocol.

Lab 12: Routing—This lab investigates routing tables and how additions are made to routing tables.

Notes—Notes for instructors using these labs.

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Comments are encouraged.  Please email: sloanjd@wofford.edu
Last updated: Monday, October 16, 2006

Copyright © 2002, Dr. Joseph D. Sloan