Educational Network Simulator

Welcome to the Educational Network Simulator

Network simulator snapshotThis project aims to provide secondary schools with a simulator in which students can practice and understand, among others, the following concepts:

  • Basic networking components: hosts (clients and servers), routers and switches
  • IP addresses and subnet masks
  • Gateways
  • Unicasting / Broadcasting
  • Concept of protocol
  • Basic networking commands: ping, traceroute
  • Static / dynamic IP addresses / DHCP
  • “Gateway mode” vs “Router mode” in routers
  • NAT
  • Servers: DNS, HTTP, DHCP

Is this a realistic network simulator?

Yes and no. If you are looking for a simulator that implements real protocols, real message structures, etc., this is not for you, sorry.

This is a simplification aimed to allow secondary school teachers to explain the basic concepts above. That does not mean that real situations cannot be simulated, but not to a TCP segment or IP datagram granularity.

Also, the implemented protocols are only simplifications with educational purposes (i.e., to know what a protocol is).

If your are still interested in it, have a try! (or if you prefer, start and empty simulation)

And if you want to download or contribute, check the project on github.