About NetForge-AI

NetForge-AI is a network simulator and a structured networking course in one place, running entirely in a web browser. You drag routers, switches, PCs, servers, and wireless access points onto an infinite canvas, cable them together, configure them in an industry-standard command line, and then watch ARP requests, ICMP echoes, DHCP leases, spanning-tree elections, and OSPF adjacencies animate across the cables in real time.

Wrapped around the simulator is a guided course of eight modules and forty-nine chapters, from the OSI model and IPv4 addressing through switching, VLANs, routing protocols, network services, and security fundamentals. Each chapter carries learning objectives and a quiz, and where the topic is hands-on it carries a lab challenge that opens a pre-built topology in the simulator — so the concept is something you do rather than something you read.

ARIA, NetForge-AI's AI assistant, is included with the Lab & AI Pass and All-Access Max. In the lab it answers questions about your topology and, in Agent Mode, builds, configures, and verifies a topology while you watch; All-Access Max also brings ARIA into every course chapter. The Free plan, the Lab Only Pass and the Course & Lab Pass don't include AI.

Networking is taught almost everywhere as a vocabulary exercise. Students learn that ARP resolves an IP address to a MAC address, that a switch floods an unknown unicast, that OSPF elects a designated router on a multi-access segment — and can recite all three without ever having seen any of them happen. The mental model stays a list of facts, so the first real troubleshooting problem has nothing to attach itself to.

The premise of NetForge-AI is that the packet is the lesson. When a student watches a frame get flooded out of every port except the one it arrived on, then watches the switch stop doing that once its MAC address table has learned the source, the rule stops being a sentence to memorise and becomes something they have observed. Everything in the product follows from that: the animated data plane, the real CLI, the labs attached to chapters, and — on the plans that include it — an AI assistant whose instructions are to explain why rather than to hand over an answer.

The second reason is access. Traditional network labs mean a download, an installer, a vendor account, and a machine you are allowed to install software on — which rules out a lot of Chromebooks, a lot of school networks, and a lot of people. NetForge-AI runs in the browser tab you already have open, and the canvas itself is open to anonymous visitors with no account at all.

• Not vendor-affiliated. NetForge-AI is an independent educational platform, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any networking vendor or certification body. Product names, protocols, and standards are referenced descriptively, for teaching.
• Not a production network emulator. The simulator models protocol behaviour faithfully enough to learn from and to cross-check against real gear, but it is a teaching instrument — not a replacement for lab hardware, or for emulators that boot real vendor images.
• Not an exam brain-dump. The Final Weighted Exam exists to check whether the course was understood. There are no leaked questions, and no claim that passing it certifies anything beyond that.

NetForge-AI is primarily a subscription product with a genuinely usable free tier. The site also carries Google AdSense advertising. We do not sell student work or engage in data brokerage.

Free

A free account opens Module 1 end to end, a lab canvas with up to five devices per topology, and three saved topologies. No AI. The lab canvas itself is open without any account.

Lab Only Pass — $15/month or $129/year

No device or save limits in the lab, community posting, and classroom hosting with no seat cap. Course: Module 1. No AI.

Course & Lab Pass — $25/month or $219/year

All eight modules and forty-nine chapters, the Final Weighted Exam and the Verified Certificate, with no lab limits and community posting. No AI.

Lab & AI Pass — $25/month or $219/year

No lab limits and community posting, plus ARIA in the lab — question-and-answer and Agent Mode, which builds, configures, and verifies topologies — with a monthly AI usage allowance. Course: Module 1.

All-Access Max — $35/month or $299/year

Everything: the full course, the exam and certificate, no lab limits, and ARIA in the lab and in every course chapter, with 2× the monthly AI allowance of the Lab & AI Pass.

• Students working through networking coursework who want to see the protocols behave, not just read about them.
• Instructors running lab sessions — NetForge Classroom presents one shared canvas to a class over a join code, with pass-the-pen control and auto-graded challenges.
• Engineers prototyping an addressing plan, a VLAN layout, or a routing design before it touches real hardware.
• Self-taught learners who need a structured path rather than a pile of tutorials — with, on the plans that include ARIA, an AI assistant to ask when a step does not make sense.

Command syntax, prompts, and every line of show output in the simulator are held to real command-line behaviour, because students cross-check them against real equipment and a plausible-but-invented output teaches a false expectation. Course chapters are written against the protocol standards they describe, and the comparison pages credit competing tools where those tools genuinely win.

If you find something in the simulator or the course that does not match real-world behaviour, that is a bug and we want the report. Email it to support@netforge-ai.com with the command or chapter and what you expected instead.