Building Network Devices as a Networking Class Homework Infrastructure

Undergraduate networking courses aim to teach students how the Internet works. While existing approaches cover everything from using the sockets API to configuring networks, there is less focus on understanding the internal workings of the devices that constitute the Internet infrastructure. In this work, we introduce a homework infrastructure that can be used to teach key communication protocols within the TCP/IP stack by having students implement their own network devices and the protocols they use. Our platform, built on top of Mininet, provides a realistic emulated environment where homework-related protocol implementations for network devices can be quickly developed. The infrastructure includes an auto-matic grading system that scales to handle over 600 students through blackbox testing of protocol implementations. We have successfully deployed this system for three years across multiple networking courses with great results. This paper documents the essential design decisions and make the platform publicly available.