Lion Cipher Lab
Networking basics: IP addresses, ports, DNS, and the path a packet takes
- Foundations
- Beginner
- ~35 min
- Free · no account required
Why it matters
Almost every tool you will meet later — nmap, tcpdump, Wireshark, curl, a vulnerability scanner, a firewall rule — is built on the same four ideas: an address that says who, a port that says which service, a name that DNS turns into an address, and a route that a packet follows to get there. Learn those four once and every later tool stops being magic and starts being obvious. This lab builds that model from zero and then proves each piece is real by showing it to you on your own machine, so the concepts stick instead of staying abstract.
What you'll learn
- the IP / port / DNS model
- IPv4 vs IPv6
- public vs private addresses
- ports and listening services
- DNS resolution
- reading a packet's path
Steps in this lab
- The whole model in four words: address, port, name, path
- The address: what an IP is, IPv4 vs IPv6
- Public vs private: why your address is not the one the world sees
- The port: which door on the address
- Is it reachable? ping, and what latency tells you
- The name: how DNS turns cloudflare.com into an address
- The path: tracing every hop with tracert / traceroute
- Why this is the model behind everything that comes next