Infrastructure and tools for a computer network and datacommunication laboratory for a computer engineering undergraduate course

Abstract:  Abstract This project aims at the design of a classroom environment and the development of laboratory experiments for a discipline on Computer Network Laboratory for an undergraduate course on Computer Engineering at Escola Politecnica da Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil. Special consideration was taken concerning the cabling and the planning of the physical and logical configuration of the classroom network, due to the need to run experiments using network equipment like routers and ATM switches. An important part of the laboratories is to reinforce the concepts acquired in the theoretical lectures and, for this reason, the experiments were planned for every network layer. Most of the experiments use software tools specifically developed for the experiments, like runtime libraries and simulators. Besides, the course material profits from tools developed for web distance learning training, including multimedia, on-line evaluation tests, chats and simulators. The laboratory has been running for three years and a new revision of the classrooms and of the experiments is being implemented