Pong Revised: Research & Results

By leveraging open-source frameworks, we delivered sPONG and cPONG, a pair of Secure Socket Service (SSS) applications that turn the classic Pong game into a secure, network-based competition within a Local Area Network. The system enables real-time multiplayer gameplay while incorporating Zero Trust principles, load balancing, proxy servers, auditing, and transparent communications, with an intuitive UI for monitoring socket conditions and packet-level performance. Our research demonstrated efficient operation with average data exchange under 5 milliseconds, and balanced sent/received traffic, providing valuable insights into secure distributed systems design and offering a safe, locally hosted educational platform for teaching cybersecurity concepts through competitive gaming. Future work includes expanding to denial-of-service defenses, AI opponents, cloud integration, and broader educational deployment.