Analysing vb6 network traffic

I'm using Microsoft Network Monitor to analyse traffic that is sent through a VB6 application via winsck.ocx

The hex viewer of the packet shows the data which is sent from my computer to the server, however the data seems to be encoded....I don't think it is encrypted as the header says: WiFi: [Unencrypted Data]

H开发者_运维知识库ow can I decode this data?

I know you can click on a decode button but there are hundreds of protocols to choose from and I have no idea which one to select.

Start by checking the properties of the Winsock object on your form. It should be either "0 - sckTCPProtocol" or "1 - sckUDPProtocol". In the Network Monitor window select either TCP or UDP, whichever matches the Winsock property.

As a general background to networking, you have a series of "layers" each with a different responsibility. So TCP handles errors, timeouts, etc. for a data stream. This sits on top of IP which simply moves data bits from one device to another. Both of those rely on a physical mechanism - WiFi in your case. Each layer needs to know certain information so the sending device slaps a header on your data before it sends it out. Thus the first 20+ bytes of any given packet are not what your application will send/receive and you can ignore them if the connection is working.