A Journey from End Systems to Backbone Routers: A Virtual Lab Environment for Online Computer Networking Courses

Abstract

Carrying out purely online laboratory for the computer networking course is challenging in a few aspects. Students lack tangible interaction with the physical user interface of physical networking equipment, and for the instructor, setting up a virtual environment precisely matching the real physical lab is unrealistic. To address the problem, we developed a novel virtual lab environment that sheds light on computer networking by showing students components of typical computer networks with both hosts and backbone infrastructure using Wireshark and Mininet. The tools we utilized are a packet sniffer and emulated networking testbed. Even though students do not physically build a computer network as was done in the real lab, they still got insights into a packet's journey from a source host through routers before getting to the destination host. Our data analyses provided the information about the perceptions of these tools for online computer network laboratory from students' perspectives and its associated factors.