The purpose of this project is to develop a visualization tool that will aid students' understanding of network behavior. Networking concepts are primarily taught through lectures. This provides students with a strong theoretical foundation, but omits the important practical element of enabling students to "see" a network in an operational state. For example, students can be well-versed in TCP/IP theory, datagram forwarding, ACKs, ARP requests and replies, and still fail to understand what these concepts mean in a real network environment. PacketQuest seeks to remedy this situation, providing a hands-on learning experience for students and a visual teaching tool for professors.

In developing PacketQuest, the researchers are focusing on analysis of packet content and network traffic. Ease of use, affordability, and suitability as an instructional tool are the main criteria for evaluating the finished system. There are sophisticated network monitoring systems available, but the better ones are very expensive and are designed for network management use. PacketQuest allows students to analyze packet trace data files captured with inexpensive packet-capturing software, resulting in a system that is affordable and is designed for use in undergraduate networking labs.