MT Arcade

Games where the rules are the real rules.

Every packet in these games behaves the way it would on a real network: real addresses, real TTLs, real handshakes. Play first, ask questions after. Both run in your browser, on a computer or a phone.

The cats.com map: a house with a PC, a phone, a TV, a router and a small DNS box, and the ISP and cats.com server beyond the wall. Inside the router box: the NAT table swaps 192.168.1.53 for 198.51.100.23, with the packet's IPv4 header marked as changed.
The house, and one stop inside it: the router box doing NAT.
New · A networking adventure

Get cats.com Working

Everyone in the house can open cats.com except your PC. Inspect each device, change real settings and find out why. Once it works, follow the page load inside every machine on the way: the PC, a Pi DNS server, the router box, the DNS servers on the internet and the cats.com web server.

  • DNS
  • ARP
  • Switching
  • Routing
  • NAT
  • TCP
  • HTTP
  • Rendering

20 to 30 minutesMouse, keyboard or touchPlain HTTP, so you can read every byte

Play Get cats.com Working Goes with Lesson 1-1
Kulshan // Home LANRide the packet
through the clouds.
The original · 8-bit

Packet Journey

You are the packet. Leave the home network, get through the router, cross the internet and come back, one level at a time. A fast, arcade-style tour of the whole trip.

About 10 minutes a runKeyboard, or touch controls on phones

Play Packet Journey Lab Mode: step through each header

Which one first?

New to networking? Start with Get cats.com Working: it slows down and explains each step. Want the whole trip in ten minutes? Play Packet Journey. Either way, the How Networks Work course takes the same ideas one at a time.