CSCI-353: Programming Assignment 2
Due on Oct 20th, 11:59 p.m.
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The goal of this assignment is to give you hands-on experience developing tools for
network traffic management. In this assignment, you will use RAW sockets to generate
network traffic. Develop a ping tool to send periodic ping messages to the specified IP
address and compute the estimated round trip time (RTT) based on the received response
times. The program will need to use RAW sockets. More information about RAW sockets is
located at (​http://sock-raw.org/papers/sock_raw​). ​You must develop this assignment
using Python 3.5+

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Command Line Input:
>pinger -p “payload” -c count -d destination -l logfile
Command Line Arguments:
❖ -p: the string to include in the payload. E.g. “Hello World”
❖ -c: the number of packets used to compute RTT. Should default to 10 if no count is
given.
❖ -d: the destination IP of the ping message
❖ -l: the logfile to store debug information. This is an optional input

When the program is run without any command line arguments, the program
should print usage instructions and exit. The logfile generated will not be used to grade the
assignment.

Note: When you have difficulty running the program using the input format above, you
may use “>sudo python (py for Windows) pinger.py ….” and please note that in your
README.

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Example:
>[user@laptop:~] sudo pinger –p “hello” –c 4 -d 206.190.36.45
>Pinging 206.190.36.45 with 5 bytes of data “hello”
>Reply from 206.190.36.45: bytes=5 time=69ms TTL=47
>Reply from 206.190.36.45: bytes=5 time=70ms TTL=47
>Reply from 206.190.36.45: bytes=5 time=69ms TTL=47
>Reply from 206.190.36.45: bytes=5 time=69ms TTL=47
>Ping statistics for 206.190.36.45: Packets: Sent = 4, Received =4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 69ms, Maximum = 70ms,
Average = 69ms
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You will need to create the echo request packet sent to the destination IP. The
format is as follows, the number in parenthesis is the length in bytes:
Type(8), Code(8), Checksum(16), ID(16), Sequence Number(16), Data(Variable)

You may use the following links as an aid to implement checksum, as well as lecture
slides:
1. http://www.binarytides.com/raw-socket-programming-in-python-linux/
2. http://opensourceforu.com/2015/03/a-guide-to-using-raw-socket
s/

To calculate RTT, you will need to time when you send and when
you receive the packet.

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Grading:

We will test your pinger against the ping command in the terminal. Example output of that
is as follows:

$ ping google.com
PING google.com (172.217.4.174): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 172.217.4.174: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=6.966 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.4.174: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=3.668 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.4.174: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=3.824 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.4.174: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=5.643 ms
--- google.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 3.668/5.025/6.966/1.363 ms

(Your terminal output for ping may differ based on the operating system)

Your pinger should output RTT statistics within 3ms or 10% of the terminal ping statistics,
whichever is greater, over the course of 100 pings. E.g. if the average ping according to the
terminal is 6ms, yours should output that the average ping is between 3ms and 9ms. You
will be graded based on the number of passed test cases.

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Code and Collaboration Policy

You can discuss the assignment and coding strategies with your classmates. However, your
solution must be coded and written by yourself. Please refer to the plagiarism policy in the
course syllabus.

The submissions will be run through code similarity tests. Any flagged submissions will result in
a failing score. Keeping your code private is your responsibility.

Submission Instructions

You can develop and test your code on your own machines. Create a compressed tar file that
includes a README and the source code.

To submit, create a folder called LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME with the above files. Tar the folder
LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME. Submit the tar file on blackboard.

The README must contain: your USC ID, compiling instructions, additional notes on usage if
needed.

You must use Python 3.5+. Make sure you add the directives to support direct execution. The
directory structure should look like this:

LASTNAME_FIRSTNAME
->Pinger.py
->README.txt