PACKET  //  packet.social  //  443/tcp  6969/udp
tls: handshake complete
convenience layer: not found

ERR_ABSTRACTION_NOT_FOUND

A social network you have to learn networking to use.

There is no sign in button, no feed to scroll and no app to install. You read and write to packet.social from a terminal, one request at a time, with tools already on your computer. If you do not yet know what a header, a port or a status code is, you will by the time you post.

This website is the front door. It tells you how to connect and shows you what people have posted. Everything else happens in your terminal.

Connect

Five commands cover everything. Replace you and password with your own.

# 1. check that the server is alive curl https://packet.social/status # 2. ask for a registration challenge, solve it, then register curl https://packet.social/register curl -u you:password -d 'answer=...' https://packet.social/register # 3. read the feed curl https://packet.social/feed # 4. post (the length is counted in bytes, by curl) curl -u you:password --data-binary 'hello from the wire' https://packet.social/post # 5. like post 3 (a UDP datagram, no reply will ever come) echo -n 'LIKE:3' | nc -u -w1 packet.social 6969

The manual lists every rule: man packet.

What you will learn

Each layer of the network is something you touch directly. Skip a layer and the server will tell you, in its own words, which one you skipped.

	layer	where you meet it
L7	application	Methods, headers, status codes, basic auth, reading a 401.
L6	presentation	TLS, base64, hex, bytes versus characters.
L5	session	Keeping a connection open, and what closing it costs you.
L4	transport	TCP for posts, UDP for likes, and why they behave differently.
L3	network	Your address, subnets, routes, and what the server sees of you.
L2	data link	MAC addresses and your local network.
L1	physical	Your cable, or your radio. Not our problem.

House rules

Bytes, not characters. A post is measured in bytes. Emoji cost more than letters.
Nothing is deleted. DELETE returns 405 and always will.
No notifications. Nothing is pushed to you. Ask the server when you want to know.
Likes are datagrams. You will never know if yours arrived. Neither will they.
Be a good packet. Rate limits are real. Past 60 requests a minute you get a 429 and a wait.

PACKET(7)hostile networksPACKET(7)

NAME SYNOPSIS REGISTERING POSTING READING LIKING LIMITS STATUS CODES

Name

packet.social, a social network with the convenience layer removed.

Synopsis

curl [-u handle:password] https://packet.social/PATH echo -n 'LIKE:ID' | nc -u -w1 packet.social 6969

All reading and writing is done over HTTPS on port 443, except likes, which are sent as UDP datagrams to port 6969. Responses are plain text. Your terminal decides how they look.

Registering

Registration is gated by a small networking task, so every account belongs to someone who can do at least one thing with an address.

curl https://packet.social/register challenge: network address of 10.55.12.73/26 answer with: answer=A.B.C.D curl -u you:password -d 'answer=10.55.12.64' https://packet.social/register 201 Created

Handles are lowercase letters, digits and underscore, up to 20 bytes. Passwords are 8 to 128 bytes and are sent with HTTP basic auth, over TLS. Use one you use nowhere else. A challenge is good for 10 to 20 minutes and is tied to your address.

Posting

curl -u you:password --data-binary 'your words' https://packet.social/post 201 Created location: /post/42

A post may be up to 280 bytes. The body must be sent exactly as written, so use --data-binary and not -d, which strips newlines. Check a length yourself with printf '%s' 'text' | wc -c. Control characters are refused, so a post cannot rewrite your terminal.

Reading

curl https://packet.social/feed curl https://packet.social/post/42 curl https://packet.social/profile/rfc1149

Reading needs no account. The feed shows the newest 50 posts. Times are seconds since 1970. Turn one into a date with date -d @1785961012 on Linux, or date -r 1785961012 on macOS. Nobody here says "2h ago".

Liking

echo -n 'LIKE:42' | nc -u -w1 packet.social 6969

UDP has no delivery report, no retry and no reply. The server counts the datagrams that reach it. Read the post again later to see if yours was one of them.

Limits

post size 280 bytes requests 60 per minute per address posts 20 per 10 minutes per handle registering 5 attempts per hour per address likes 1 per post per address http redirect port 80 forwards to 443

Requests over the limit get a 429 and a Retry-After header. Slow down.

Status codes

200 OK request worked 201 Created your post or account exists 400 Bad Request you sent something malformed 401 Unauthorized missing or wrong credentials 403 Forbidden wrong registration answer 404 Not Found no such post or profile 405 Method Not Allowed DELETE and PUT do not exist 409 Conflict that handle is taken 413 Payload Too Large over 280 bytes 429 Too Many Requests slow down

The full list of rules is also at home. Posts are visible at get /feed.

Feed, read only

curl https://packet.social/feed HTTP/1.1 200 OK content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

You are looking at a window, not a door. Nothing can be posted, liked or deleted from this page. That happens in your terminal. man packet.

Preview build: these five posts are samples, not real people.

show the raw octets of this response