Strange Fuel, based out of the Canadian Rockies, has built something the industry has quietly needed for years: a networking course specifically designed for entertainment technicians — not repackaged CompTIA prep with a lighting console shoehorned into slide 47.

Conduit covers the full stack from signaling fundamentals through VLANs, multicast, IGMP, and spanning tree, with a direct throughline to show control protocols like sACN. The thing that sets it apart is a browser-based live network simulator — actual sACN packets flowing through a virtual show network you can click around and inspect. That’s a genuinely different way to learn this stuff compared to staring at static diagrams. The gap between “I can make it work” and “I understand why it works” is real in this industry, and this is a course built specifically to close it.

Testimonials from Cirque du Soleil and freelance PMs back it up — not marketing fluff, but the specific kind of feedback (“networking went from feeling like a mystery to something I can actually understand, talk about, and troubleshoot”) that suggests it’s landing with the right audience. Team licenses are available with discounted per-seat pricing from two seats up, with a team progress dashboard for shops that want to run it as staff training.

More from Strange Fuel on Conduit:

Conduit was built for the gap between “I can make it work” and “I understand why it works.” Build confident understanding of show networks — whether you’re brand new to networking or just filling in the gaps.

What’s covered:

• Signaling Fundamentals — encoding, modulation, and physical properties of signals that affect network performance
• Physical Transmission — how signals become frames and travel via Ethernet, Fiber, and Wi-Fi
• Ethernet & MAC Addressing — how devices find each other on a local segment
• Switching & Forwarding — MAC tables, flooding, and forwarding decisions
• IP Addressing & Subnetting — subnet masks, CIDR, and network boundaries
• Redundancy & Spanning Tree — redundant paths and loop prevention
• VLANs & Segmentation — logical separation on shared infrastructure
• Multicast & IGMP — correctly managing multicast traffic for reliable control networks
• Show Control Integration — how show control networks support common entertainment protocols

Pricing:

• Individual: $299 USD one-time — full course access for one person, three-year access, all future updates included, completion certificate, community Discord access
• Teams: from $219 USD per seat (discounted from 2 seats up) — includes team progress dashboard, bulk seat management, priority support, and custom onboarding for 25+ seats

No subscription. No credit card required to try it. Check it out at conduit.strangefuel.com.