Internet-based distance learning is slowly gaining new territories and substituting current teaching methodologies. However, distance learning not only consists of transferring documents to web pages, but also of developing new concepts, methods, and implementation architectures. This article presents concepts and implementation issues for an example remote hands-on networking laboratory. The described course gives access to real network hardware via the Internet. In particular, authentication, authorization, scheduling, and error recovery issues had to be solved.

The tremendous growth and decreasing costs of Internet technology forced many companies to substitute expensive leased lines by connections based on Internet Protocols. This allows enterprises to establish Intranets and to offer remote employees to securely access such an Intranet. In addition, networks of different business partner can be interconnected forming Extranets. A key technology is the IP Security (IPSec) protocol suite that enhances the Internet Protocol (IP). IPSec introduces security comparable to leased lines but is much less costly due to the fact that Internet resources can be shared among different users. Such networks that are constructed using secure methods to transfer information are called Virtual Private Networks. They represent a further step towards a more secure, less costly and universal communications platform.