TCP live: Experiential learning on the global internet

Providing support for experiential learning about computer networking poses difficulties for both students and lecturers: the low level nature of network programming and monitoring requires systems-level skills that are often absent in undergraduates; the time available in any given module is limited; the view from the classpsilas laboratory is constrained by firewalls and provides only one perspective onto the Internet; the adaptive nature of TCP is often invisible when seen only on a LAN. We have sought to address these challenges by exploiting Planet Lab (www.planet-lab.org) for educational purposes. Planet Lab is a networking research facility consisting of nodes at over 400 sites across the world, which are exempt from institutional firewall restrictions, and which are shareable amongst all members. We have developed a framework with an appropriate set of graphical user interfaces that runs on Planet Lab and allows students to experiment with core Internet protocols. TCP Live is a particular application that uses the framework. This paper describes the structure of the framework and its use to support experiential learning about TCP.