Brief Project Overview in English

Z VirtlabWiki

The aim of the Virtlab project is to make networking lab equipment of multiple teaching institutions accessible remotely and to give students more opportunity for individual practice with real networking equipment. Students may reserve lab equipment and then access it using a standard WWW browser with Java applet support. The interconnection of the topology is accomplished automatically according to the topology of the task selected by the student from a collection of predefined tasks. The student may also ask to interconnect his/her own topology. Partner lab sites may either operate independently or borrow lab devices from each other, over the internet, to create large-scale virtual topologies beyond the limits of a single institution.

Virtlab distributed virtual topology

The physical devices which best suit requirements of the particular topology reservation are found dynamically throughout all cooperating sites. The distributed nature of the resulting virtual topology is completely hidden to the student. Advanced features such as virtual network probes, forbidden commands checking and support for guidance of students' work by a remote tutor are also implemented. Automatic evaluation of students' work will be added soon. Many useful prototypes of supporting hardware devices were also developed in the scope of the Virtlab project.

Dynamic mapping of physical lab devices satisfying user requirements

Currently Cisco Networking Academies at VSB-Technical University of Ostrava and School of Business Administration at The Silesian University in Karvina are interconnected and other partners are welcome to join.