Supporting networking courses with a hands-on laboratory

With the growing importance of communications, the establishment of a network laboratory with a networking course is becoming a necessary and rewarding venture. Not only do the students receive instruction in class, but they also obtain hands-on experience through setting up commercial networks in the lab. One such lab is being established at the University of Arkansas in the Computer Systems Engineering and Electrical Engineering Departments to support the undergraduate and graduate network courses. The lab has 12 PCs with Ethernet combination cards so that coaxial or twisted-pair cables may be used. The software for the lab currently consists of Novell NetWare 3.12, Novell NetWare 4.1, Linux, PC-NFS, Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and Artisoft LANtastic 6.0. The students set up the networks and perform various exercises, including troubleshooting, administrating and timing. The students also have access to a protocol analyzer that can be used on the University of Arkansas College of Engineering's computer network so they can observe how higher traffic networks operate. The College of Engineering's computer network supports PCs running MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux, and Sun Workstations running Solaris and SunOS. The network is hooked up to the Internet as well. Students are able to observe the types of packets traversing the network. The analyzer was written by a Master's student and includes a tutorial. A report of the success of the lab and the use of the protocol analyzer is given.