You already have an indispensable wealth of knowledge in front of you. Here is a good place to start: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet

In this context, a packet is a "chunk" of data being transferred across the network. To be honest, at your current knowledge level you are going to need a significant amount of education on IP network theory before you will be able to understand in general the massive amount of data that your network analyzer (packet sniffer) software is capable of providing.

If you don't get frustrated easily, and you can read several pages of technical info at a time before your vision starts to blur, there's a good chance you can do online research (or get a book on IP Networks) to get the info you want.

On the other hand, if you can say exactly what specific info you are trying to get by analyzing your network traffic, and what kind of network it is, perhaps we could narrow things down quite a bit!

As Ivan says, you appear to be a complete novice at nitty-gritty TCP/IP stuff. You ask,
"... explain it someone who knows nothing about the deeper aspects of computers?"
In terms of IP addresses and so forth, you're jumping in at the deep end -- this is, typically, what people go to college to learn. No, the material is NOT apt to being explained for someone who's not educated about the basics. Just because you /can/ get the product, doesn't mean that it's the "right" product for you. In fact, you can NEVER understand this stuff until you DO get (at least a little ways) into the "deeper aspects" of computer networking -- this IS the fundamentals of computer networking.

That said, everyone has to start somewhere... so here are the answers to your questions:

A "packet" is a discrete chunk of data, handled on the internet as a unit. It may contain only 1 character, or hundreds, as the data. Either way, the Internet (and internet routers) mark it with special flags/headers/etc (which, with the data payload, form the rest of the packet) , and treat it as a unit. This is, typically, the "basic" unit of internet traffic. EVERYTHING that crosses the internet -- e-mail, web browsing, etc, is broken into packets by the sending computer, and reassembled into a cohesive whole by the recieving computer.

As for your "WAN Miniport" question -- I'm not familiar with that specific product, but almost certainly the "IPX" reference is to the IPX/SPX protocol suite, a competing (and incompatible) suite to TCP/IP.

A "string" is how computer-geeks refer to a series of 1 or more characters that are to be treated as a discrete unit (typically by some program). A login-name is a typical "string", and the password is another. An URL is often treated as a string. The thing you type in a chat/IM session before hitting "return" or "send" or whatever, is usually a string. Etc...

Last but not least, it's not "a" hex... "hex" in computer terms is usually short for "hexadecimal" aka base-16 numbering:
base10 base16
0 0
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
5 5
6 6
7 7
8 8
9 9
10 A
11 B
12 C
13 D
14 E
15 F
16 10
17 11
18 12
19 13
20 14
21 15
etc... etc...

If you really want to learn this stuff, you'll probably need books, maybe classes. Here's some starting links on Wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inte...ocol_suite
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal

Best of luck!


- Steve

You need to read the TCP-IP bible, which is to say, "TCP/IP Illustrated Volume I" by the late great W. Richard Stevens.
www.kohala.com/start/tcpipiv1.html is a good place to start, but there is no substitute for a hard copy on your desk.