Project Pingsucker

** A passive-aggressive network appliance designed to frustrate latency-sensitive gamers and make online games feel like they're haunted by the ghost of 2008 Wi-Fi. ** This tool uses tc netem and iptables to inject just enough jitter, delay, and packet loss into outbound UDP traffic to make competitive games frustratingly unplayable – without breaking basic web, video, or chat traffic. It's designed to run on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with two network interfaces (e.g., built-in Ethernet and a USB-Ethernet adapter) acting as a transparent bridge or upstream router.

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Why?

Because sometimes the problem isn't the network – it's who you're sharing it with.

• Maybe you're a parent with teenagers who have no idea … absolutely no idea just what you’re willing to do with a bit of free time and a vibe-coding session with ChatGPT
• Maybe you're tired of bandwidth-hogging, voice-chat-screaming, chair-punching housemates.
• Maybe you're a troll with a conscience.
• Or maybe you're just curious what it feels like to weaponize latency without touching a firewall rule. Whatever your motive, this tool introduces plausible, periodic chaos into UDP traffic while leaving everything else mostly untouched. Your users will notice... but they probably won't understand why.

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What It Does

• Creates a NAT bridge between subnet (LAN) and uplink (WAN)
• Assigns static IP to subnet interface and enables forwarding
• Runs a dnsmasq DHCP server for the LAN side
• Configures a tc netem queue to inject:
  • Randomized delay (0–361ms)
  • Jitter (±5–19ms)
  • Packet loss (0–4%)
  • Probability-based "sanity windows" (occasional 0-delay bursts)
• Filters only UDP traffic, excluding DNS and DHCP

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What It Doesn’t Do

• Intercept or decrypt traffic
• Touch TCP flows (web browsing remains usable)
• Do anything useful for serious network engineering

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Known Effective Targets

Game	Result
CS:GO / CS2	Snapshots arrive late, input feels laggy, scoreboard ping swings wildly
Valorant	Disconnects or kicks due to ping >250ms
Apex / Warzone	Rubberbanding and shot registration hell
Web, Zoom, YouTube	Mostly fine. DNS and TCP traffic bypass netem.

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Hardware Requirements

• Known to run perfectly on a Raspberry Pi 3B+, but considering its simple mission in life this could probably run fine on lesser hardware
• 2 NICs (e.g., built-in Ethernet + USB-Ethernet)
• Debian or Raspbian Linux
• Internet upstream on uplink
• Downstream router or switch on subnet

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Network Topology

[Internet] | [Modem or ISP Router] | [Pi Running frustrate-gamers.sh] | [Your Router / Wi-Fi Access Point] | [Victims] The Pi acts as a stealth inline router. Downstream devices get their IP from the Pi and route through it as if it's the gateway.

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Warnings & Disclaimers

This is not a security tool. This is not ethical hacking. This is network satire in script form.

• This script flushes existing iptables rules - make sure the device is running behind a NAT or firewall.
• Do not run this on a production system unless you're very sure of what you're doing.
• UDP shaping may impact video-conferencing tools like Zoom or Teams. If the target network includes people who need to “work from home” you might be messing with someone's gainful employment.
• ChatGPT vibe-coding played a significant (who am I kidding, it played the primary) role in the creation of this tool. Short as it is, it still contains several anomalies and superfluous lines of code. Live with it … or fork it and clean it up if it bothers you enough.
• Do not deploy on networks you don't own or control.
• Don't use this to sabotage people maliciously.
• You are responsible for how you use this. I just wrote the punchline.

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Install

1. Flash a Raspberry Pi with Debian or Raspbian Lite
2. Enable IP forwarding
3. Plug the uplink into eth0, the target subnet into eth1 (or your USB-to-Ethernet adapter)
4. Clone this repo on your Pi
5. Make the script executable.
6. Run it manually or install as a system service