Analysis of TCP Connection Initiation Using Wireshark

Analysis of TCP Connection Initiation Under Different Traffic Conditions Using Wireshark ▪️INTRODUCTION: Every time you open a website, stream a video, or send a message online, something happens before any actual data moves — a handshake. A silent, structured agreement between two machines that says: " I want to talk. Are you ready? " This handshake is the foundation of TCP — the Transmission Control Protocol — and understanding how it behaves under pressure is central to understanding real-world network performance. This experiment explores that exact question. How does TCP connection initiation change as network traffic increases? What can a rising SYN packet count tell us about network load? And at what point does the network begin to show signs of stress? To answer these questions, traffic was generated under four controlled conditions — low, normal, medium, and high — using hping3 on Ubuntu (WSL). Each traffic level was captured and analyzed in Wireshark, with a sp...