Developing a multifunctional network laboratory for teaching and research

  • Authors:

  • Xiaojun Cao;Yang Wang;Adrian Caciula;Yichuan Wang

  • Affiliations:

  • Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA;Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA;Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA;Gerogia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on SIG-information technology education
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Adequate hands-on experience on networking and computing is becoming vital and necessary for students majored in programs such as Information Technology and Computer Science. However, building a hands-on experimental lab environment turns out to be challenging for many institutions, particularly for a new-born program or an urban university, due to space constraints, budget limitations, maintenance difficulty and so on. This paper presents and explores the design of a multifunctional lab environment for both teaching and research while taking the cost and space challenges into consideration. On one hand, the lab utilizes a number of industrial-strength Cisco routers, switches and wireless access points to setup a practical platform that allows students to configure and administrate their network design by applying the knowledge learned in the classroom. On the other hand, the lab is equipped with useful (and mostly free) software packages such as OPNET, Network Simulator (NS-2), Virtual PC, and CPLEX, which enable students to conduct various network modeling, simulation, optimization, and emulation together with their research projects. Accordingly, each iteration for the lab design and implementation as well as experiences learned and future integration with additional curriculum, are presented in this paper.