Geek Question: Packet Transmission (no, not anything dirty)

[johnnylongcaulking]

I'm a noob when it comes to all things internet. I was monitoring the packets my computer was transmitting and receiving when I boot it up.

I don't have cookies enabled and I don't autologin to this or any other site. However, my TX packet transmissions jumped from a 200 to just over 3200 just by going to www.eccie.net. Why is that? Not stirring up conspiracies, trying to understand.

[Bob Soldios]

Well, anytime you hit a web site it will generate a packet load. Http://www.eccie.net is a reasonably dense front page (lots of graphics from several sources for the pics, the buttons, the banners, the ads, etc). When you hit the site it fires off connections to load all those things. Multiple HTTP connections from one course can quickly run your packet per second count up.

This will be amplified if you are on a connection where you have any kind of transmission issues which can cause packet retransmits to be needed, or in some cases the computer has to step down to several smaller packets instead of a few large ones which would also drive up the rate.

[Roly-Poly]

When downloading anything on the web there is some upstream traffic to verify that packets were received, request retransmissions, etc.. Also, every image, style sheet, javascript, etc. gets a whole new http request. Upstream traffic is small in comparison to download, but it is not negligible.

If you are using IE9 or Chrome, try hitting F12, choose the "Network" tab, start capturing and reload the page. You will see a surprising number of files downloaded. Each one is requested with some TX packets, and each download has session control info TX'ed. (For more reference, google HTTP and TCP.)

[greenhorn1960]

I missread your post. I thought it said "greek question". LOL

[Guest110516]

Can't really add anything useful to the conversation, but in terms of not-dirty, but related terminology: packet sniffer.

[guest061212-1]

Geek talk... What a turn on!!!!

I concur with the previous posters. The traffic pattern sounds normal for this site.

Now you can go back to sniffing panties instead of packets.