This simulator renders a rotatable 3D schematic of representative Internet infrastructure — from a home laptop through access, DNS, and data-center/cloud services — and lets you run real network tests against it while inspecting every hop and every packet in flight.
• A drag-to-orbit, scroll-to-zoom 3D schematic topology (not a geographic map) with five camera views: Overview, Access, DNS, Data center and Top view. • A Connect via selector for the access network: Home fiber, 5G mobile or Satellite, each with different latency/throughput characteristics. • A component inspector with a dropdown covering every node in the topology (laptop, access network, routers, DNS resolvers, CDN, data-center services) plus a Focus in 3D button, live description and tag list for the selected component. • A packet lab with a full test suite — Load website (HTTPS), Ping ×4, DNS lookup, and Traceroute — each with destination and network-condition selectors, a cache toggle, and Run/Pause/Stop/Next-hop step controls. • A live terminal-style console log color-coded by message type, alongside a packet detail panel showing the protocol stack (e.g. Ethernet/IP/TCP/TLS/HTTP) for the packet currently in flight. • A protocol color legend (DNS, ICMP, TCP/TLS/HTTPS, service calls) and a live packet/route status readout with hop-by-hop route history.
This is an educational model of representative IPv4 architecture, not a live map of any real network — it includes fiber, mobile and satellite access; switching; NAT; routing; DNS; peering; transit; CDN; security; and data-center services, with animation deliberately slowed down for inspection. Loading a website triggers a DNS lookup first (to resolve the hostname to an IP address), then a simplified TCP handshake and TLS 1.3 exchange before the HTTP request/response actually travels — the simulator's DNS authority connections abstract away the many intermediate routers a real query would traverse.
Ping measures round-trip latency using ICMP and, in this model, excludes the prerequisite DNS lookup time, while Traceroute sends one ICMP probe per TTL value to reveal the hop-by-hop path to a destination. Return paths in this model are symmetric, whereas real Internet paths can be asymmetric, use tunnels or IPv6, and vary per flow.
The terminal console logs each test step (muted status text, green success, amber warnings) as it happens, while the packet inspector panel to its side shows the protocol stack currently carrying the packet — useful for seeing exactly which layer (DNS, TCP, TLS, HTTP) a given hop belongs to. The footer's protocol reference section links to the actual specifications this model is built on: ICMP (RFC 792), DNS (RFC 1034) and TCP (RFC 9293), useful starting points if you want to go beyond the simulator's simplified exchanges.
A hostname like a website address is not itself a network address — the browser needs an IP address to open a connection. DNS lookup resolves the hostname to an IP address before any TCP handshake, TLS negotiation, or HTTP request can happen, which is why Load website runs DNS resolution as its first step.
Ping sends ICMP echo requests directly to the destination and measures round-trip latency, without showing the intermediate path. Traceroute sends a series of ICMP probes with increasing TTL values, and each router along the path that decrements the TTL to zero replies, revealing the hop-by-hop route to the destination one hop at a time.
Each access type has different latency and throughput characteristics before the packet even reaches the wider Internet — satellite in particular has much higher latency due to the physical distance to orbit. Switching between Home fiber, 5G mobile and Satellite in the simulator lets you see how the access link changes overall test results even when the rest of the path is identical.
No — it is explicitly an educational model of representative IPv4 architecture, not a live map of any real network. Return paths are simplified to be symmetric, DNS authority hops are abstracted, and animation is deliberately slowed for inspection. Real Internet paths can be asymmetric, use tunnels or IPv6, and change per flow.