Packet Defender 1.0

Today was the first day of our spring semester, and I’m teaching middle school web design again. As part of our introductory class, we watched the video, “The Internet: IP Addresses & DNS” from Code.org and then played a Kahoot I made with AI about it, using the video transcript. As we learn to create webpages, I think it’s important to understand the basic architecture of the Internet and the World Wide Web, so we started with TCP/IP, IP Addresses, and DNS.

This video is excellent, but it occurred to me as I watched it again with my students and they played the Kahoot, our class activities could be even more meaningful if students could play a game which included some of the vocabulary and terms from the video about TCP/IP, and involved simulated routing of Internet packets as well as cyberattacks.

Before attempting to create my own game, I used ChatGPT to try and find a free web-based game like the one I had in mind, but did not have success. I’m sure some must exist, so if you know of any or find any please let me know with a comment below or via social media.

This is a VERY basic 1.0 version, but after several hours of conversation and work with ChatGPT Pro (26 printed pages worth) I was able to create a working prototype. I went through at least 10 versions of this with ChatGPT.

You can play the current (1.0) version of “Packet Defender” on GitHub pages. Check out the javascript code on the GitHub repository I created for the project.

“Packet Defender (Game Logo 1.0)” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Here’s a game overview at this point:

Single player, text-based web game (single HTML file)
Scenario: 5 available packets needing transmission or cyber-defense are shown every 30 seconds.
Goal: Earn as many points as possible in the allotted time
Gameplay: Type and submit the source IP, packet name, and destination IP, then click TRANSMIT (normal packet) or DEFEND (intermediary server / router is under attack / colored red) and needs cyber-defense.

I’m excited to share this with my students tomorrow and get their feedback. Ideally I’d like to make this multi-player, team-based, and use a leaderboard.