T3/E3 PPP Analyzer
Analysis of PPP frames over T3/E3 lines
Overview
The PPP Analyzer captures a host of PPP protocols exchanged between the two nodes over T3/E3 links & provides useful analysis, which includes
distribution of protocols, protocol fields, frame lengths and frame status. User can obtain detailed analysis of the protocol and can perform various
statistics measurements.
Main Features
- Supports a host of protocols PPP, IPCP, BCP, BPDU, PAP, CHAP, HTTP, SNMP, STUN, FTP, DNS, and DHCP
- Ability to test and perform numerous measurements across WAN- LAN or LAN-LAN connection
- Ability to test and analyze HDLC based PPP protocol in synchronous environment
- Search and filtering capabilities for both real-time as well as offline analysis.
- Provides Summary, Detail, Statistics, and Hex dump views.
- Summary view provides the information about few important fields (Dev #, Layer 3 Protocol, LCP message type and higher protocol specific
information like Destination and Source IP address, Destination and Source TCP as well as UDP port details, HTTP/FTP message type, and so on)
- Statistics view displays statistics based on frame count, byte count, frames/sec, bytes/sec etc for the entire capture data.
- Hex Dump View displays raw frame data as hexadecimal and ASCII octet dump.
- Detailed view displays decodes of user-selected frames.
- Detailed information of all the captured Frames or only the filtered frames can be exported to ASCII file for the further off-line analysis and printed.
- Capability to export summary as well as detail information to an ASCII file for subsequent import into a database or spreadsheet
- Ability to capture and decode both PPP routed protocols, PPP bridged protocols
- User can decode frames from the recorded trace files and can be played back using HDLC playback application.
References
- RFC 1661 PPP links in HDLC framing
- RFC 1662 PPP links in HDLC framing
Protocols Supported
A list of protocols that are supported by GL's PPP analyzer are as given below:
Supported Protocols Structure for PPP Protocol Analysis
- LCP (Link control Protocol)
LCP is responsible for establishment, release and maintenance of PPP link between two PPP nodes. LCP also helps in selection of encapsulation
format while exchanging layer3 information, selection of authentication protocol for the peer entity, determining the packet size limit etc.
- Authentication Protocol
PPP provides two types of authentication protocol.
- PAP - Password Authentication Protocol is used by the peer entity to establish its identity in PPP session. It usually occurs just after
the link establishment phase.
- CHAP - Challenge Authentication Protocol is used to periodically verify the identity of the peer. It can be initiated at any time during a
ongoing PPP session.
- Link Quality Report (LQR)
LQR helps in monitoring the quality of PPP link. Packets are sometimes dropped or corrupted because of noise and equipment problem. LQR helps
in sorting out such links so that traffic can be re-routed to alternate links if necessary.
- Bridging PDU (BPDU)
BPDU encapsulates other higher layer protocol e.g IP based protocols. This protocol enables the interconnection between two remote LANs via PPP link.
- NCP
Network control protocol enables the selection of specific options and control protocols at connection time across LAN-WAN connection. This means
that network administrators do not have to statically configure the router interface for remote interfaces. Rather, remote interfaces negotiate the link at
connection time. NCP supports two types of protocols, namely, IPCP and BCP.
- IPCP (Internet Protocol Control Protocol): The IP Control Protocol (IPCP) is responsible for configuring, enabling, and disabling the IP
protocol modules on either ends of the point-to-point link. IPCP uses the same packet exchange mechanism as the Link Control Protocol (LCP).
- BCP (Bridging Control Protocol): The Bridging Control Protocol (BCP) is responsible for configuring, enabling and disabling the bridge
protocol modules on both ends of the PPP link. BCP uses the same packet exchange mechanism as the Link Control Protocol (LCP).
- SNMP
Enables the administrator to collect the different management information from any network node in a network. Each node maintains a MIB (Management
information Base) and SNMP agent. The later collects the MIB information from the device and make them available to network management system (NMS)
via SNMP protocol. GL's PPP Analyzer supports SNMPv1 and SNMPv2.
- DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed internet directory service. DNS is used mostly to translate between domain names and IP addresses,
and to control email delivery. The DNS system consists of three components: DNS data (called resource records), servers (called name servers), and
Internet protocols for fetching data from the servers. The billions of resource records in the DNS are split into millions of files called zones. Zones are
kept on authoritative servers distributed all over the Internet, which answer queries based on the resource records stored in the zones.
- DHCP
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is an Internet protocol for automating the configuration of computers that use TCP/IP. DHCP can
be used to automatically assign IP addresses, to deliver TCP/IP stack configuration parameters such as the subnet mask and default router, and to
provide other configuration information such as the addresses for printer, time and news servers.
- STUN
The STUN protocol enables a SIP client to discover whether it is behind a NAT, and to determine the type of NAT. The STUN proposal defines a
special STUN server in the public address space to inform the STUN-enabled SIP client in the corporate (private) address space of the Public NAT IP
address and port being used for that particular session.
- HTTP
Application protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems and involves MIME like communication between user
agent (UA) and origin server identified by URI. GL's PPP Analyzer supports HTTP 1.1 and HTTP 1.0
- FTP
FTP, enables the data transfer between one user (PC) to another remote user (PC) over IP. It defines a set of commands and replies exchanged
between the two users over control connection. A separate full duplex data connection is opened between the two communicating user for actual
data transfer.
- ICMP
IP network doesn't ensure the reliable transfer of datagrams. Some packets are often lost during transmission. So there should be some
mechanism to report any problems in the IP network. The ICMP messages typically report errors in the processing of datagrams.
- SMTP
SMTP (Simple Message Transfer Protocol) is mail transfer protocols that transport the mail reliably and efficiently via Internet. When a SMTP
client has a message to transmit, it opens a duplex connection with the server and transfers the message using IP/TCP.
- POP3
Post Office Protocol- Version 3 is the mail retrieving protocol used by the client to retrieve the mails from the server. Initially, the server host
starts the POP3 service by listening on TCP port 110. When a client host wishes to make use of the service, it establishes a TCP connection with
the server host. When the connection is established, the POP3 server sends a greeting. The client and POP3 server then exchange commands
and responses until the connection is closed.
Summary, Detail and Hexdump Views
The PPP analyzer application is invoked from the main menu of GL's T3/E3 Analyzer for real-time analyzer. The analyzer displays summary,
detail, call trace, statistics, and hex dump views in different panes. The summary pane displays Dev#, Frame #, Time relative, Len, Error,
Layer 3 protocol, LCP code, IPCP code, BCP code, PPP Message type, Source/Destination IP address, TCP Source/Destination Port, UDP
Source/Destination Port, Message Type, and so on. The User can select a frame in summary view to analyze and decode each frame in the
detail view. The Hex dump view displays the frame information in HEX and ASCII format
Protocol Summary, Detailed, and Hexdump Views in PPP Protocol Analysis
Real-time Analysis
Multiple ports can be selected for a single instance of analyzer to capture the frames simultaneously. The recorded trace file can
then be analyzed offline and exported to ASCII file, or printed
The real-time capturing requires users to specify ports, and Frame Check Sequence (FCS).
Port Selection for real-time capture
Filtering and Search
Users can record all or filtered traffic into a trace file. Filtering and search capability adds a powerful dimension to the PPP Analyzer.
This feature can isolate required frames from the captured frames in real-time, as well as offline. In real-time capturing, filter based on
length of frames can be set. The frames can also be filtered after completion of capture based on Frame Number, Time, Length, Error,
Layer3 Protocol, LCP Code, IPCP code, TCP and UDP source and destination port, PPP Message type, and so on. Similarly, search capability
helps user to search for a particular frame based on specific search criteria.
Offline Filtering and Search Criteria for PPP Protocol Analysis
Real-time/pre-capture Filtering and Search Criteria for PPP Protocol Analysis
Statistics View
Statistics is an important feature available in PPP analyzer and can be obtained for all frames both in real-time as well as offline mode.
Numerous statistics can be obtained to study the performance and trend in the PPP network and it is based on protocol fields and different
parameters e.g. Use Type (Key/Total/Field), Statistic type (Frame count, Byte count, Frames/Sec) and patterns like Range List, Wild card.
Statistics Options for PPP Protocol Analysis
Enhanced Trace Saving Options
Users can control the captured trace files by saving the trace using different conventions such as trace files with user-defined prefixes, trace
file with date-time prefixes, and slider control to indicate the total number of files, file size, frame count, or time limit. This feature also allows the
captured frames to be saved into a trace file based on the filtering criteria set using display filter feature.
Protocol Trace Saving Options for PPP Protocol Analysis
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