Protocol Playground
Build your own network protocol and learn why TCP/UDP work the way they do
Build Your Own Network Protocol
Learn why TCP and UDP are designed the way they are by building your own protocol from scratch and testing it under real network conditions.
Protocol Headers
Design packet headers with sequence numbers, checksums, and acknowledgments.
Network Conditions
Test your protocol with packet loss, corruption, reordering, and latency.
Reliability
Discover why ACKs, timeouts, and retransmissions are essential.
Performance
Learn about sliding windows, flow control, and throughput optimization.
The Problem
Networks are unreliable. Packets get lost, arrive out of order, or become corrupted. How do we send data reliably over such a chaotic system?
The answer lies in protocol design. By adding the right information to each packet and implementing the right behaviors, we can achieve reliable, ordered, error-free communication.
In this lab, you'll discover these solutions yourself by experimenting with different protocol designs and seeing what works (and what doesn't).
How This Lab Works
Build
Design your protocol by adding header fields like sequence numbers, checksums, and ACK numbers.
Test
Run your protocol under various network conditions - packet loss, corruption, high latency.
Compare
See how your protocol performs compared to TCP and UDP, and understand why they're designed the way they are.
No prerequisites needed! This lab teaches protocol concepts from the ground up.