Mission Tech
Signal Path
Three paths. One continuous world. Start with a packet, learn what keeps it safe, then zoom out to the internet that carries a billion of them.
Signal Path I
Journey of a packet from browser to server.
You type a name into a browser. Before anything else can happen, six things happen in a specific order. Walk them.
Before the path
One request. Four layers.
Every stop ahead works at one of these layers of the network stack. The stack is how the internet is organized: lower layers move bits, higher layers give them meaning.
- L7 · ApplicationWhat the bytes mean. DNS and HTTP both live here.
- L4 · TransportTCP keeps bytes in order between two endpoints.
- L3 · NetworkIP addresses and routing between networks. Routing and NAT live here.
- L2 · LinkMAC addresses on your local network. ARP lives here.
Ready to walk the path? Enter the guided missions, artifacts, and progression through all six stops.
Enter the missions →Side stops (optional)
Different mode
Signal Path I as a game. Same journey. Chiptune.
8-bit arcade mode. Real modem handshake, a packet you steer, Mt. Baker on the horizon.
Enter the Arcade →Signal Path II
How the web proves who it is, and how it remembers who you are.
The packet arrived. Good. Now answer the questions that arrival did not: is this server who it claims to be, who vouches for it, and how does it know you on the next request. Path II deepens the same journey with cryptography and identity.
TLS Handshake
See the negotiation that turns a plain socket into an encrypted channel.
Certificate Trust
Walk the signature chain from the server back to a trusted root.
SSO & OAuth
Log in with Google. See the five parties and the three redirects that make it work.
Session vs. Token
After you log in, how does the server remember you on the next request. Try both answers.
Signal Path III
One server becomes an internet.
One server works until it does not. Path III starts where a single machine falls over and ends with BGP, the protocol that makes every server on Earth findable from every other one.
Servers
Watch one machine handle a request, then drown under load.
Load Balancers
Put a front door on a fleet. Pick a strategy. See what breaks.
Firewalls
Decide what gets in. Decide what gets out.
BGP capstone
See how thousands of autonomous systems gossip about reachability.
Different mode
You just ran BGP on the decision tree. Run it again with chiptune.
The arcade's final level is the backbone. Finish BGP here and Level 3 unlocks in there.
Enter the Arcade →