Remotely accessible sandboxed environment with application to a laboratory course in networking

Abstract

Authentic learning in an undergraduate networking course is best achieved when students have privileged access to their workstations and the ability to set up networks of arbitrary size and complexity. With such privileges come great risks for hosting networks. While the initial response to these challenges was to digitally isolate dedicated laboratories, today virtual machines are considered the best practice in setting up such labs.The authors' NSF-sponsored project, "SOFTICE", showed almost 3 years ago that open source virtualization solutions could solve classroom management headaches provoked by early solutions and also that they provide new pedagogical opportunities. Our project illustrates the milestones that adoption of virtualization by IT educational institutions followed, going one step further to sketch out what might be just around the corner. Instead of relying on deploying virtualization suites on each workstation, letting a set of pre-defined virtual machines run constantly on assigned hardware, or managing the transfer of large virtual HD images over networks, we opted from the start for a centralized hosting of VMs on a load-balancing cluster which abstracts the hardware constraints. As enrollment grows, more nodes can be added. As usage of some nodes increase, incoming remote connections are spread on idle hardware automatically. This paper discusses the achievements of the SOFTICE project in undergraduate networking labs and compares our approach to alternative solutions which recently emerged in the CS and IT education communities. More specifically, we discuss the clustering-virtualization technologies synergy and showcase some of the pedagogical benefits by detailing existing laboratories.

Cyber Security Teaching and Learning Laboratories: A Survey

“…Cyber security modules may include experiments involving ethical hacking and the analysis and observation of malware, the risk of such experiments to the campus network and the Internet is too great to not isolate these labs. 19 This fact, along with the point that the tools used in cyber security experiments are often prohibited from traditional laboratories means that there is little choice but to create a dedicated cyber security laboratory. 20,21 Arguably, a dedicated traditional physical laboratory for cyber security would offer students the best and most realistic environment in which they can experiment, 11 as they are able to practice with real equipment and tools.…”

“…The aforementioned benefits come at great effort and cost. 19 Purchasing and maintaining cutting edge equipment for the lab is expensive 11,22 especially when this lab may only be used for one module. Dedicated room space is required by this lab, again if this lab is used for only one module then when it is not in use, it is wasting space which could otherwise be used for another module.…”

Building an end‐to‐end ISP broadband infrastructure as an advanced networking subject

“…These solutions include a VMWare-based laboratory [16], a laboratory using virtual machines in delivering networking, security, and database courses [17], a conceptual framework of a virtual networking laboratory [18], an open source virtualization XEN solution [19], a virtual networking lab (VNL) as a service to partner institutions overseas [20], a VMWare virtualization platform for system administration education [21], a virtualization platform serving multiple courses in networking, system administration and security, using both the open source (OS) virtualization OpenVZ, and full virtualization KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) [22], an integrated physical and virtual networking laboratory using physical Cisco equipment, VMware, and Vyatta as virtual routers [7], a virtual multiple laboratory built on virtualized infrastructures [23], virtualization for an undergraduate computer network course [24,25], and decentralized virtualization for systems administration education [26]. Replacing physical machines with virtual machines is now a common strategy in server upgrades and deployments.…”

Xen Worlds: Creating a virtual laboratory environment for use in education

“…For access, students use SSH or X-Windows to connect to a "master node", that acts as a gateway and stepping stone into the environment. Finally, scalability is addressed by utilizing a cluster of compute nodes created using older PCs and the Warewulf clustering toolkit [AGR07a]. One of the benefits of using a Warewulf cluster is it supports the dynamic addition of hardware, and automatic load-balancing, so the cluster can be expanded as needed.…”

“…A pedagogical goal of the SOFTICE environment is to minimize the need for students to "learn the laboratory platform", so they can maximize their time with the environment [AGR07a]. To reduce the time needed to learn the environment, students use the Manage Large Networks (MLN) software to create their VMs and networks.…”