What it is
ackdelay is a network operations homepage. Open it and you get your public IPv4/IPv6, ISP, and connection details at a glance, the live reachability of the major cloud providers, a set of instant network and developer tools, and a customizable launchpad of the sites you hit every day. Create a free account and it remembers your links, layout, widgets, and notes; use it signed-out and you still get the tools and a sensible default layout.
It's built to be the kind of start page a network person would actually keep — quick to load, dense with the right information, and free of the clutter and ad-soup that bury most network-tools sites.
Where the name comes from
If you've stared at packet captures, you already get it. "ACK delay" refers to TCP delayed acknowledgement — the behavior where a receiver briefly holds off on sending an ACK so it can piggyback it onto outgoing data or combine it with the next one, cutting down on tiny ack-only packets. It's a small, quietly clever optimization baked into TCP, and a wink to the people this site is for. The tagline says the rest: ACK received.
Why it exists
Most "homepage" replacements are either pretty but useless, or useful but ugly and slow. And most network tool sites are a maze of pop-ups and SEO filler wrapped around a calculator. ackdelay is the reaction to both: a single, clean place that respects your attention, loads instantly, and puts the things a network engineer reaches for — subnetting, IP and MAC lookups, DNS, encoders — one click away. Depth over sprawl; substance over noise.
What's inside
On privacy
The tools are deliberately client-side where they can be: subnetting, IP conversion, encoding and hashing all run entirely in your browser, and nothing about them is sent anywhere. The lookups that genuinely need the network — your public IP, DNS records, MAC vendor — query well-known public services directly and aren't logged here. Site traffic is measured with privacy-friendly, cookieless analytics rather than ad trackers.
Who's behind it
ackdelay is built and maintained by a network engineer who wanted a better daily homepage and decided to make one. It's part of a small, growing suite of network and tech tools, developed in the open and improved continuously.
Questions, ideas, or a tool you wish existed? Reach out at hello@ackdelay.com.