Wireshark not displaying GET or POST data

Question

I'm a student and I'm taking my first networking class. I'm working on an assignment designed to get me used to using Wireshark and understanding packet transfers. Part of the assignment is to collect some data about a certain GET request, but my Wireshark isn't showing anything related to GET or POST requests.

I've discussed this with my instructor and he can't figure it out, either. I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling Wireshark, but haven't gotten anything different.

Here's what I'm getting when I should be getting GET data:

26030 1157.859131000 128.119.245.12 10.0.0.7 HTTP 564 HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found (text/html)

This is the first packet I get after connecting to the server (this comes from right-click "copy"). From what I've gathered from the assignment instructions and the instructor, this should get a GET request. Anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

You can use a browser plugin like firebug to examine actual request and response headers being exchanged. Sometimes due to page caching actual document may not be refetched after only headers like if modified since since being exchanged or the browsers cached version has not expired.