How to pick up graded homework and Wireshark lab submissions: Your graded submissions are usually handed out in class. Any that were not picked up during class are kept by the TA. If you did not pick up yours, please see the TA during his office hours. Or talk to him before or after class. He will try to bring to each class any graded submissions that have not yet been picked up.
I expect that most of you will do Wireshark lab assignments on your own personal computer. Note that you cannot capture packets on UTCS computers due to obvious security concerns.
The labs are written assuming that you have a personal computer that runs Windows and is connected to the Internet (note: 802.11 wireless connection is okay for these labs). Wireshark for analyzing packet traces and WinPcap for capturing traces can be downloaded from http://www.wireshark.org/download.html . From this site, Wireshark download is also available for Mac and other OS platforms. However, I have not tried them and do not know whether their installation is straightforward.
Intro lab Installation of Wireshark and "test drive" -- do this as soon as possible, no need to submit.
If you do not have access to a personal Windows computer, you can skip the Intro lab and do the following assigned labs using Kurose-Ross captured traces on UTCS Linux machines where wireshark is already installed. (You should borrow a Windows computer to experience how to capture traces - which is fairly easy and straightforward.)
In fact, for many questions in the lab assignments, it is a good idea to answer them using the Kurose-Ross captured traces, rather than your own captured traces, because it will be easier for the TA to figure out whether or not your answers are correct. The Kurose-Ross captured traces were obtained from http://gaia.cs.umass.edu/wireshark-labs/wireshark-traces.zip .
DNS lab Due at beginning of class on September 25, 2008, Thursday.
HTTP lab Due at beginning of class on October 7, 2008, Tuesday.
TCP lab Due at beginning of class on October 14, 2008, Tuesday.
IP lab Due at beginning of class on October 30, 2008, Thursday.
Ethernet-ARP lab Due at beginning of class on November 20, 2008, Thursday.