Abstract:

Different IT network environments designed for testing and learning purposes and a large number of laboratories used for educational purposes use hardware solutions from different vendors. Students of University North in the Computer Network course are working on different laboratory exercises, based on hardware (boxes of switches and routers). Exercises includes also TCP/IP network switch or router configuration, troubleshooting and testing IP traffic. Students are getting experience in the network security area, and they are getting skills in analyzing and solving network problems. Legacy hardware and software, which is used today in our lab, is vendor oriented and it is not flexible for dynamic changes.
Software solutions from open source communities give us more flexible and optimal lab infrastructure. For example, standard virtualization methods based on Linux, where network service and applications are running, hypervisors (KVM) which enable creating multiple virtual machines on simple peace of hardware gives possible functional solutions suitable for educational environments. IT industry, production environments are developing and deploying network services in a virtual environment; therefore, student interest is to get more knowledge in this area. This work involves students in process of learning how to implement network functions in a new environment based on virtual machines, which are widely used in today’s IT industry. That does not mean only to run one network service inside a virtual machine. Real network production needs high available and automated environment. That functionality also can be installed in lab and give students the opportunity to do lab tasks in a multi-platform (using different operating systems, different IOS, different vendor solutions) environment.
This paper describes possible solutions and how to collect and implement existing virtualization technologies that builds an optimal network lab environment for research and learning purposes. One of the objectives is to design, build and run virtual network environment. In this phase, students will learn how to design, install, configure, and run virtual environment. Another aim of the paper is to show scalability in building lab environment starting from very small environment, which uses only one physical server based on virtual CPUs and network virtual functions up to multiple servers organized in clusters. This enables larger research environment with more network interface bandwidths connected to virtual machines which running complex network functions or services.
Finally, this work will show one of the concrete solution - functional lab environment. Solution enables working lab environments for students, education, and research. Therefore, the main purpose of these efforts is to involve students actively in infrastructure design and deployment of virtual network environment. After building process students will be able to analyze, troubleshoot and solve different network problems based on different network protocols (TCP/UDP/IP). Lab solution based on virtualization platform gives student ability to test their own automated installation procedures by writing scripts or by using different automation tools.

Keywords:

Network virtualization, Software defined network, hypervisor, virtual network functions, virtual machines, virtual network lab.