The Layer Stack and IP Addresses
Four wrappers, four jobs, and the address in the middle one
About 45 minutesMediumThe Internet and Search
What your child can do at the end
Put the four layers in order and justify each position
The brief
Networking is a stack of layers, each solving one problem and refusing to solve the others. Your data gets wrapped on the way down and unwrapped on the way up, and a router in the middle only ever opens the network wrapper. Get the order wrong and nothing works. In this lab you assemble the stack yourself, watch a message get wrapped and carried and unwrapped, then work out exactly which machines share a network.
Skills it develops
abstractiondecomposition
How it is assessed
3 graded challenges inside the lab, and 8 questions at the end that check the idea rather than the clicks. Every attempt is saved, so a retry after a mistake counts as the learning it is.