A student-managed networking laboratory

A major component of undergraduate Information Technology education is hands-on experience in a realistic environment. Attempting to provide an environment that is realistic, however, poses several problems in a university setting. The major problems we have encountered thus far are a shortage of network management personnel, the need for an isolated yet Internet-connected lab, and the lack of financial resources to build a heterogeneous lab. We have addressed these problems through the establishment of a student-managed networking laboratory. This lab is currently supervised by a single faculty member and managed by six undergraduate students. The students provide support for five different courses and have devised solutions to each of the major problems we have encountered, and also have built a firewall-protected network that can be easily subnetted on an ad hoc basis, allowing students from multiple courses to use the lab simultaneously without cross-talk between the courses. Through the use of tools such as VMware Player, Linux, and SNMP we have been able to construct a lab that allows for the incorporation of physical and simulated hardware at a very low cost. The students involved with the lab have also built a suite of custom tools that allow us to re-deploy the lab for different courses in a matter of minutes. With a dedicated staff of students we are able to provide a simulation of a heterogeneous networking environment at a very low cost. The enhanced lab has become a valuable resource, and is the centerpiece of our networking laboratory facilities.

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