0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 31
Version
4
IHL
5
Type of Service
0x00
Total Length
0x002E (46)
Identification
0x1A2B
Flags
0x2
Fragment Offset
0
Time to Live
64
Protocol
6 (TCP)
Header Checksum
0x3F4A
Source IP Address
192.168.1.100
Destination IP Address
93.184.216.34
Options & Padding
(none)

Protocol

What it does

The Protocol field identifies which protocol is used in the data portion of the IP packet. This tells the receiving system how to interpret and process the payload. Common values include TCP (6), UDP (17), and ICMP (1).

Common Examples

1 ICMP Used for ping, traceroute, network diagnostics
6 TCP Reliable connection-oriented traffic (HTTP, SSH, etc.)
17 UDP Fast connectionless traffic (DNS, streaming, gaming)
41 IPv6 IPv6 encapsulated in IPv4 (tunneling)
50 ESP Encrypted IPsec traffic