Assignment –1
CS 342: Networks Lab (September – November2020)
Instructions:
a) Make sure that you read, understand, and follow these instructions carefully.
Your cooperation will help to speed up the grading process.
b) Following are generic instructions. Make sure that you also check carefully
and follow any specific instructions associated with particular questions.
c) In this assignment, you will explore the various network diagnostic tools. An
end user makes use of these tools to discover how a machine is connected to
the network and how the network looks like beyond the first hop.
d) Solve the questions individually. Prepare a single report (PDF only) for all
these experiments. The file name should be same as your roll number.
Example:180101001.pdf. Once done, submit the report in Moodle on or
before the submission deadline.
e) All the experiments need to be performed on a Unix/Linux-based computer
(preferably Ubuntu 16 or newer).
f) Submission deadline: 11.59 pm, 20 September 2020 (Hard Deadline).
g) These are some additional formatting related information:
Make sure that you include your name and roll number on the first
page of the report.
The font size of the report body should be a value from 10 to 12 points,
and maximum line spacing is1.5.
Your grade is not proportional to the number of pages you submit.
Clear and concise writing is preferred.
Make sure that the report can be opened using any standard PDF
viewer.
PDFs consisting of photographs of handwritten assignments will not be
considered for grading.
Screenshots should be avoided unless there is a good reason to use
them(or specifically mentioned in the question).
Please structure your report such that your answers are clearly
indicated for each question of the assignment. The evaluator should
not need to search for your answers.
The report should not contain more than 6 pages(+1 page allowed in
exceptional case).
Ethical Guidelines (lab policy):
h) Deadlines: Deadlines should be strictly followed. Assignments submitted
after their respective deadlines will not be considered for evaluation.
i) Cheating: You are expected to do the complete assignments by yourself.
Cases of unfair means and copying others’ solutions will not be tolerated,
even if you make cosmetic changes to them. If we suspect that this or any
other form of cheating has happened, we are compelled to award NEGATIVE
marks (equal to the maximum marks for the assignment).
j) If you have problems meeting a deadline, it is much better to talk to the
instructor about it than to cheat.
Questions (Full Marks:40)
Q1.The Internet Ping command bounces a small packet(s) to test network
communications, and then shows how long this packet(s) took to make the
round trip. The Internet Ping program works much like a sonar echo-
location, sending a small packet of information containing an ICMP
ECHO_REQUEST to a specified computer, which then sends an
ECHO_REPLY packet in return. Explore more about the ping command
and answer the following questions (Unix or GNU/Linux version only):
a) What is the option required to specify the number of echo requests to
send with ping command? (0.5)
b) What is the option required to set time interval (in seconds), rather
than the default one second interval, between two successive ping
ECHO_REQUESTs?(0.5)
c) What is the command to send ECHO_REQUEST packets to the
destination one after another without waiting for a reply? What is the
limit for sending such ECHO_REQUEST packets by normal users (not
superuser)? (0.5 + 0.5)
d) What is the command to set the ECHO_REQUEST payload/data size (in
bytes)? If the payload size is set to 32 bytes, what will be the total
packet size? (0.5 + 0.5)
Total marks: 3
Q2. Select six hosts of your choice in the Internet (mention the list in your
report) and experiment with pinging each host 25 times at three different
hours of the day. You can use the following online tools for this
experiment:
i) http://www.spfld.com/ping.html
ii) https://www.subnetonline.com/pages/network-tools/online-ping-
ipv4.php
a) List out the average RTT for each host in tabular form, and explain
whether RTT has a correlation with the geographical distance of the
destinations from source. (0.5+0.5)
b) Check if in any case, packet loss is greater than 0% and provide reason
for the same. (1)
c) Pick one of the above used hosts, and repeat the experiment with
different packet sizes ranging from 64 bytes to 2048 bytes. Plot
average RTT vs packet size. (1)
d) Explain how change in packet size, and time of the day impact RTT. (1)
Total marks: 4
Q3. Select an IP address of your choice (mention the address in your
report) and capture the outcome of 1,000 pings in two separate files by
executing the following ping commands.
ping -n <IPAddress>
ping -p ff00 <IPAddress>
Come up with a method to read and analyze the observations captured in
the files and answer the following questions. You are free to look for a tool,
programming/scripting language that is best suitable for the task and
learn just enough of it to get the analysis done.
a) What was the packet loss rate for each command? (1)
b) What was the minimum, maximum, mean, and median latency of the
pings that succeeded? Ignore pings that failed in the calculation. (2)
c) Give plot to show the normal distribution of the ping latency. (1)
d) The two experiments are almost similar except in few aspects. Describe
the significant network behavior difference (if any) you observed
between the two experiments. (1)
Total marks: 5
Q4.With regard to ifconfig and route commands, answer the following
questions:
a) Run ifconfig command and briefly describe its output (important
attributes). (2)
b) What options can be provided with the ifconfig command? Mention and
explain at least four options. (1)
c) Explain the output of route command. (1)
d) Mention and explain at least four options of the route command.
Execute the route command with these four options and show the
output. (1)
Total marks: 5
Q5.Answer the following questions related to netstat command.
a) What is the command netstat used for? (1)
b) What parameters for netstat should you use to show the established
TCP connections? Include a screenshot of the command and output (1)
c) What does “netstat –r” show? Explain all the fields of the output. (1)
d) What option of netstat can be used to display the status of all network
interfaces? By using netstat, figure out the number of interfaces on
your computer. (1)
e) What option of netstat can be used to show the statistics of all UDP
connections? Run the command on your computer and show the output.
(1)
f) Show and explain the function of loop-back interface. (1)
Total marks: 6
Q6.Perform a traceroute experiment (with same hosts used in Q2) at three
different hours of the day, and then answer the questions below. Use any
one of the following online tools for this experiment:
http://ping.eu;
http://www.cogentco.com/en/network/looking-glass;
https://www.ultratools.com/tools/traceRoute;
http://network-tools.com;
a) What is the use of traceroute tool? (1)
b) List out the hop counts for each host in each time slot. Determine the
common hops between two routes if they exist. (1)
c) Check and explain the reason, if route to same host changes at different
times of the day. (1)
d) Inspect the cases when traceroute does not find complete paths to some
hosts, and explain the reasons. (2)
e) Is it possible to find the route to certain hosts which fail to respond with
ping experiment? Give reasoning. (2)
Total marks: 7
Q7.Answer the following questions regarding ARP.
a) How do you see the full ARP table on your machine? Explain each
column of the ARP table. (2)
b) What command is used to add or delete an entry into the ARP table.
Use this mechanism to add at least two new hosts to the ARP table
and include a screenshot. (1)
c) Can there be an entry for any IP from different subnet in the ARP table of your
PC? Explain your answer. (2)
d) Check and report what happens when you forcefully replace (using
delete, add command of arp) the Ethernet address of an existing entry
with the Ethernet address of another existing entry of the ARP table in
your PC, and send ping to those IPs. Explain the behavior. (1+2)
Total marks: 8
Q8. Install network tool nmap in your PC and perform the following
experiments:
a) What is the command to check which PCs of your sub-net are up? (0.5)
b) How to detect firewall settings of your own PC using nmap? (0.5)
c) Run the command of question (a) at least 6 different times of a day, and find the
number of hosts online. Plot the number of on PCs vs time, to see if there is an
hourly trend for when computers are switched ON or OFF in your LAN. (1)
Total marks: 2
