kognise/arpchat

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

2545 stars · 53 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

A Rust-based chat application that sends text messages between computers on the same local network using ARP packets instead of standard networking protocols. It implements a custom transport protocol with compression, presence discovery, and heartbeat notifications on top of ARP.

Use cases

• chat with friends on a client-isolated network without internet or standard ports
• send messages between machines on the same LAN using only ARP
• see who else is online on the local network via presence discovery
• experiment with a transport protocol built on top of ARP
• communicate on a network where UDP/TCP traffic is blocked

When to choose

• you need to message people on the same local network where normal chat traffic is blocked or isolated
• you want a fun, hacky networking experiment or educational tool
• you're on a client-isolated network and want a zero-server chat

When to avoid

• you need reliable, secure, or production-grade messaging
• you need to chat across different networks or over the internet
• you can't get raw network privileges (e.g., Npcap on Windows, CAP_NET_RAW on Linux)
• you want a polished, supported chat product

Facets

application · maturity experimental

chat-interface networking gui networking messaging-platforms developer-tools windows cross-platform rust arp chat local-network messaging novelty rust linux

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="kognise/arpchat")