Community guide

Challenges, help, exams and shared material

How the community half of ZNetLab works — every screen, every rule and every address, written down once so the screen itself does not have to explain itself.

Open the community Where everything is

All of it needs a ZNetLab account, and all of it is free. The simulator itself still needs no account at all: labs at /learn/ run in your browser whether you sign in or not. What signing in adds is other people — a challenge somebody set you, an answer to a question, a study group, a shelf of shared notes.

Where everything is

Two places, and they do different jobs. The portal is where people and records live; the simulator is where the work happens.

Screen	Address	What it is for
Portal	`/community`	Everything below, on one page.
Community → Challenges	`/community`	Challenges people set each other, by category.
/community → Help	same screen, Help tab	Questions, their conversations, and your inbox.
Community → Material	same screen, Material tab	Links, notes and files people study from.
Community → Exams	same screen, Exams tab	Study groups, their papers and the marking.
Community → Leaderboard / Me	same screen	Standings, and your own rank, badges and readers.
Simulator	`/learn/lab`	Where a lab or a challenge is actually built.
A challenge, opened	`/learn/lab#challenge:<id>`	The challenge's own topology, loaded and ready.
Marketing → Video & images	`/lab/` → Admin portal → Marketing	The social library and the A–Z post generator.

Challenges

A challenge is a lab you built, published for other people to rebuild. It sits in one of the five categories the built-in labs already use — Enterprise, Telecom, Service Provider, Automation, Custom — so it is found beside the labs it belongs with.

Setting one

1. Build it in the simulator Open /learn/lab, build the topology, and — if you want it marked automatically — add an activity: assessment items and connectivity tests, the ones behind Check Results.

2. Save it File → Save to computer gives you a .nblab file. That one file carries the topology, every device's configuration and the checks.

3. Publish it /community → Challenges → Set a challenge. Give it a title, a category, how hard it is, one paragraph saying what has to be true at the end, and the .nblab file.

Solving one

1. Open it Open it in the simulator loads the challenge's own topology into /learn/lab and puts a bar across the top saying what it is worth. Opening it is counted as an attempt.

2. Do the work Configure, test, break things. Nothing is timed.

3. Record it If the author included checks, press Check my work — the bar shows how far along you are, and offers Record the solve once every check passes. If they did not, the bar offers I have solved it instead, and says plainly that there was nothing to check.

Points are given once per challenge, and never for your own. The author earns 2 points every time somebody else solves theirs — enough to make writing good challenges worth it, small enough that two friends solving each other's in a loop earn less than doing the work.

Help

Help is a category like any other, and a request for help opens a conversation that reads like a chat: messages in order, by name, anybody may reply.

What	How
Ask	/community → Help → title, what you tried, what happened. Say the lab or challenge it is about and the answer comes faster.
Reply	Open the conversation and write. Everybody already in it is notified, not only the person who asked.
Mark the answer	Only the person who asked, and only one per conversation — so ten helpful replies to one problem are not ten Mentor points.
Close it	The asker, when it is done. It can be reopened.
Remove a message	Its author. The row stays as removed so the replies that answered it still make sense.

A notification is written down, not pushed. The person who asked at midnight and closed the laptop is exactly who an answer is for — so every notification is stored against the account and is still waiting when they come back. The unread count sits next to Community in the portal's navigator. Email is a second delivery on top of that, and only goes out when the server is started with --smtp.

Exams

Ten to fifteen people join a group, every one of them writes a paper, and everybody sits the papers the others wrote. Writing a question is harder than answering one, so the group learns twice and nobody has to be the teacher.

The three duties

Everybody in a group owes the same three things, and the screen shows which are outstanding:

Duty	Done when
Set a paper for the group	You have published at least one.
Sit every other member's paper	None of theirs is left unsat.
Mark the open answers on your own paper	Nothing of yours is waiting.

Writing a paper

A paper is JSON, written in the box on the group screen — the form starts with a working example you can edit. Three kinds of question:

Kind	Carries	Marked
`mcq`	`options` and `answer`, the index of the right one	The moment it is handed in
`short`	`answer`, plus any `answers` you will also accept	The moment it is handed in — case and spacing are ignored
`open`	no answer key, and a `guide` note to yourself	By you, afterwards

{ "questions": [
  { "kind": "mcq",   "text": "Which protocol resolves an IP to a MAC?",
    "points": 2, "options": ["ARP","DNS","DHCP","NTP"], "answer": 0 },
  { "kind": "short", "text": "Which TCP port does BGP use?", "points": 2, "answer": "179" },
  { "kind": "open",  "text": "Explain why OSPF will not adjacency with mismatched MTUs.",
    "points": 4, "guide": "Looking for: DBD exchange, EXSTART." }
] }

Sitting one

Press Sit it. The paper arrives without its answer key — the marking happens on the server, and a paper handed out with its answers is not an exam. Hand it in and the multiple choice and short answers are marked immediately; the open ones go to whoever set the paper. You see the key only once everything is marked.

You cannot sit your own paper, and you cannot sit one twice. A paper handed in after its time limit is marked anyway and recorded as late — throwing away an hour's work over a clock somebody was not watching would be the wrong trade.

Material

One list of everything shared about a subject: a link, a page of notes, or a file. Filed by the same categories, ranked by how many people found it useful.

Kind	What it takes
A link	`http://` or `https://` and nothing else.
Notes	Typed or pasted. Line breaks are kept; it is shown as text, never as markup.
A file	PDF, pictures, text, CSV, packet captures (`.pcap`) and saved labs (`.nblab`). Not HTML or SVG — those run in a browser.

Useful is one per person and can be taken back. It ranks the list, and the person who shared it earns 2 points when somebody marks it — writing the notes everybody uses is work too.

Points, ranks, badges and readers

What you did	Points
Solved a beginner challenge	10
…intermediate	25
…advanced	50
…expert	100
Somebody solved a challenge you set	2
Sat an exam paper	5
Somebody sat a paper you set	3
Marked somebody's answers	2
Somebody found your material useful	2

Rank	At
Newcomer	0
Apprentice	100
Technician	300
Engineer	750
Senior Engineer	1 500
Architect	3 000
Principal	6 000

Badges mark different things on purpose, so a wall of them does not say one thing six times: First solve, Ten solves, Fifty solves, Author (published a challenge), Set the pace (five published, each solved by somebody), Mentor (answered ten requests for help), Well read (ten readers), All-rounder (solved something in every category), First light (first person to solve a challenge).

Readers are the people who follow what you publish. Click anybody's name anywhere on the screen to see their profile and read them.

A–Z posts for social media

Twenty-six networking topics, A to Z, each as a 1080×1350 picture and a fourteen-second clip, filed into the social library with a caption ready to paste.

Where	What it does
Admin → Marketing → Video & images	Upload from your machine, download anything, and the A–Z generator. Rendered in your browser: Chrome and Edge produce MP4, Firefox and Safari only WebM.
`node tools/make-posts.js`	The same posts made on the server, no browser needed. `--all` remakes all twenty-six, `--only A,V` picks some. It stops the server for the few seconds it files them, and starts it again through `server/start.sh`.

Every URL

Pages

Address	What
`/`	The site.
`/learn/`	The labs and the browser simulator.
`/learn/lab`	The simulator on its own.
`/learn/lab#challenge:<id>`	A challenge, loaded.
`/lab/`	Real labs on real images, on the lab server.
`/lab/` → Accounts	Every account on the server, for administrators.
`/profile.html`	Your own details.
`/login.html`	Sign in.
`/plans.html`	Plans and prices.
`/guide.html`	The product guide.
`/community-guide.html`	This page.
`/noc/`	The operations screen.
`/sitemap.html`	Every page.
`/policies.html`, `/terms.html`, `/privacy.html`, `/licenses.html`	The legal documents.
`/docs/…`	The long-form guides.

The API

Every route below needs a signed-in account and nothing more — these are what a registered account is for, not an administrator's screen. Send the session as Authorization: Bearer <token>.

Challenges, people and conversations

Method	Route	What
GET	`/api/community`	Categories, levels, ranks, your profile, unread count.
GET	`/api/community/challenges`	List. `?category= &level= &mine=1 &solved=1 &unsolved=1`
POST	`/api/community/challenges`	Publish one. Takes the `.nblab` as `document`.
GET	`/api/community/challenges/:id`	One, with its document.
DELETE	`/api/community/challenges/:id`	Take yours down.
POST	`/api/community/challenges/:id/attempt`	Count an attempt.
POST	`/api/community/challenges/:id/solve`	Record a solve.
GET	`/api/community/leaderboard`	Standings. `?limit=`
GET	`/api/community/people/:userId`	Somebody's profile and challenges.
POST / DELETE	`/api/community/people/:userId/follow`	Read them, or stop.
GET	`/api/community/threads`	Conversations. `?category= &lab= &challenge= &mine=1 &in=1 &open=1 &unanswered=1`
POST	`/api/community/threads`	Ask for help.
GET	`/api/community/threads/:id`	One, with its messages.
POST	`/api/community/threads/:id/reply`	Reply.
POST	`/api/community/threads/:id/accept`	Mark the answer. `{messageId}`
POST	`/api/community/threads/:id/close` · `/reopen`	Close or reopen.
DELETE	`/api/community/threads/:id/message`	Remove a message. `{messageId}`
GET	`/api/community/inbox`	What was waiting. `?unread=1`
POST	`/api/community/inbox/read`	Mark read. `{ids}`, or none for all.

Exams

Method	Route	What
GET	`/api/exams`	Your groups with their duties, and the ones open to join.
POST	`/api/exams/groups`	Start a group. `{name, subject, target}`
GET	`/api/exams/groups/:id`	Members, papers, your duties, everybody's duties, results.
POST	`/api/exams/groups/:id/join` · `/leave`	Join or leave.
GET	`/api/exams/groups/:id/duties`	Who still owes what.
POST	`/api/exams/groups/:id/papers`	Set a paper. `{title, minutes, document}`
DELETE	`/api/exams/papers/:id`	Take yours down, while nobody has sat it.
POST	`/api/exams/papers/:id/start`	Start sitting it — returns the paper without answers.
GET	`/api/exams/sittings/:id`	A sitting, as you are allowed to see it.
POST	`/api/exams/sittings/:id/submit`	Hand it in. `{answers}`
POST	`/api/exams/sittings/:id/mark`	Mark the open answers. `{marks}`
GET	`/api/exams/duties`	Everything owing across every group.

Material

Method	Route	What
GET	`/api/material`	The list. `?category= &kind= &group= &lab= &mine=1 &q=`
POST	`/api/material`	Share a link or notes. `{kind, title, url\|note, category, tags}`
PUT	`/api/material/file`	Upload a file — the body is the file, the rest is query string.
GET	`/api/material/:id`	One item, with a note's text.
GET	`/api/material/:id/file`	The bytes. `?dl=1` to save rather than view.
POST	`/api/material/:id/useful`	Mark useful, or take it back.
DELETE	`/api/material/:id`	Remove yours.

Limits

Thing	Limit
A challenge document	4 MB · 300 published per account
A reply or a question	4 000 characters · 2 000 messages per conversation
Conversations open at once	50 per account
Notifications kept	200 per account, newest first
A study group	15 members · a target you set, 10 by default
A paper	60 questions · 20 papers each, per group
Shared files	PDF and captures 25 MB · pictures 12 MB · saved labs 8 MB · text 2 MB · the whole library 2 GB
Shared notes	40 KB
The social library	pictures 12 MB · clips 220 MB · 6 GB in all

What it does not do

A challenge solve is marked in your browser. The simulation engine only runs in a page, so when the author included checks the machine decides and when they did not, the solve is a claim you make. Points are given once per challenge and never for your own, so the most an untrue claim ever buys is that one challenge.

Email needs SMTP. Notifications always reach the portal. They are also emailed, but only when the server was started with --smtp; without it the message is written to work/outbox as a file and nothing is sent. The portal's inbox never depends on mail working.

Something here wrong or missing? /community → Help, or the product guide.