Network incident training
NetIncident rebuilds a resolved network incident in a simulator, finds what broke by itself, and turns it into a drill your whole team can practise on. Send the same drill to a job candidate and watch, command by command, how they fix it.
Free while in early access · runs in the browser · no install
How it works
All it needs from you is what a well-run network already has: configuration backups, and the ticket for the incident.
As you always do, with the configuration backed up before and after the fix.
NetIncident builds your network as it was when the ticket opened, and as it was when it closed.
Pings, interfaces, OSPF and BGP neighbours are tested on both. What failed before and works after is the fault.
The team practises it, candidates are tested on it, and every command is recorded.
No hand-written answers
Nobody writes the checks. They come from comparing the two networks, and a drill whose “fix” does not fix it is refused.
| Check | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Ping HQ from the Pune router | Fails | Passes |
| Pune router interfaces up | Passes | Passes |
| Ping the Pune LAN | Passes | Passes |
For network teams
The lesson from an outage usually stays with the one engineer who fixed it. A drill gives it to everyone, including the fresher who joins next year.
For hiring
Email a candidate a link to a broken network. No account, nothing to install. An interviewer asks three questions on the way: what they suspect, why they changed something, and what the root cause was. You get a score and a replay of every command.
| Scored on | Points |
|---|---|
| Fixed the fault | 50 |
| Broke nothing else | 15 |
| Proved the fix (show, ping, traceroute) | 10 |
| Looked before changing anything | 10 |
| Time to fix | 10 |
| Commands the device accepted | 5 |
Data safety
A drill is made from your configurations, so what leaves with it is scrubbed first.
Passwords, keys and SNMP communities are replaced. Keys that matched still match, so a key-mismatch fault survives.
Rename devices to R1 and SW1, renumber public addresses, remove interface descriptions.
Each company’s drills and results are sealed with its own key. Other companies never see them.
The optional AI interviewer is sent the story and the commands typed, never device output.
Today: Cisco-style routing and switching, including static routes, OSPF, BGP, VLANs and trunks, HSRP, DHCP and ACLs. A fault the simulator cannot model is refused rather than faked, so a drill never teaches something that is not true.
Your devices and their configuration backups in the zNetLaB Company portal (the agent can back them up on a schedule), and a resolved incident ticket. The backups taken before the ticket was opened and after it was resolved are what the drill is built from.
Yes. Ten ready-made drills on two practice networks are open to every account, and the Company portal can start a demo company with a whole network and tickets that are faults.
It is part of the zNetLaB Company portal, which is free to start while NetIncident is in early access. Talk to us about larger teams and hiring volumes.
Not yet. An on-premises version is planned; tell us if you need it, and when.
Start with the ready-made drills today; your own come with your next resolved incident.
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