The objective of this project is to develop a computer and network security instructional laboratory (CNS-IL) to enhance undergraduate education in STEM disciplines. CNS-IL is designed to be a cost-effective, scalable, user-friendly, flexible, and remotely accessible virtual laboratory offering significant enhancements to undergraduate education in information assurance. It utilizes highly advanced Cloud Computing and Web 2.0 for easy experimentation of various computer and network security applications and attack scenarios.
This instructional laboratory allows researchers and students to experiment and learn a variety of modern technologies such as Cloud Computing, wireless applications and provides a platform for studying emerging security issues in Cloud Computing. Using infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and software-as-a-service (SaaS) allows a share development results.
The project adopts clustering technologies that utilize surplus college computing resources so it can be easily set up in colleges with limited budgets and laboratory space. It is designed as a cost-effective solution since it uses open-source software with a rich set of experiment files and related course materials shared using modern Web 2.0 principles. This allows rapid dissemination in new laboratory developments in security-based curricula. Also, while the CNS-IL is designed mainly for undergraduate courses, it can be used as a showcase for high school student recruitment efforts.
Outcome summary In the following Table, we listed the courses, and their involved labs, number of students (graduate and undergraduate) between summer of 2011 and Spring 2013: Course Semester Lab Name Course Name Total Students Grad students 445/598 Summer,2011 Service-Oriented Software Development Lab Distributed Software Development 20 20 445/598 Summer,2011 XML and Related Technologies Lab Distributed Software Development 20 20 445/598 Summer,2011 Web-based Application Development and State Management Lab Distributed Software Development 20 20 445/598 Fall, 2011 Service-Oriented Software Development Lab Distributed Software Development 18 18 445/598 Fall, 2011 XML and Related Technologies Lab Distributed Software Development 18 18 445/598 Fall, 2011 Web-based Application Development and State Management Lab Distributed Software Development 18 18 545 Fall, 2011 Web Browser Vulnerability Lab Software Security 74 0 545 Fall, 2011 A Web-Based Document Management System Lab Software Security 68 0 468/598 Fall, 2011 Basic Network Setup Lab Network Security 43 15 468/598 Fall, 2011 IPTables and Packet Filtering Firewall Lab Network Security 43 15 468/598 Fall, 2011 Basic Authentication and SSL-enabled Web Server Lab Network Security 43 15 468/598 Fall, 2011 Intrusion Detection and Penetration Testing using Snort, Syslog and Openvas Network Security 43 15 465/598 Fall, 2011 Authentication-based Web Server Lab Information Assurance 32 0 445/598 Spring, 2012 Service-Oriented Software Development Lab Distributed Software Development 18 18 445/598 Spring, 2012 XML and Related Technologies Lab Distributed Software Development 18 18 445/598 Spring, 2012 Web-based Application Development and State Management Lab Distributed Software Development 18 18 548 Spring, 2012 Advanced Network Course Projects Advanced Network Security 19 19 Total 533 247 Term Course Lab Name Total Students Grad students Undergrad Students % of Grad % of Undergrad F 468/598 Packet Filtering Setup 67 23 44 34% 66% F 468/598 Secure Web Service Setup 67 23 44 34% 66% F 468/598 Intrusion Detection and Penetration Testing using Snort, Syslog and Openvas 67 23 44 34% 66% 468/598 OpenFlow Programmable Network Control 67 23 44 34% 66% F 545 Web Browser Vulnerability Lab 74 23 51 31% 69% F 545 A Web-Based Document Management System Lab 74 23 51 31% 69% F 465/598 Authentication-based Web Server Lab 54 0 54 0% 100% F 445/598 Web-based Application Development and State Management Lab 39 39 0 100% 0% F 445/598 Service-Oriented Software Development Lab 39 39 0 100% 0% F 445/598 XML and Related Technologies Lab 39 39 0 100% 0% S 445/598 Service-Oriented Software Development Lab 45 45 0 100% 0% S 445/598 Web and Related Technologies Lab 45 45 0 100% 0% 677 345 332 48% 52% The learning curve for V-Lab is evaluated for groups of students who do not have any experience of V-Lab before. The results show the learning curve for the system is less than 5 minutes on average. The project is originally designed for supporting computer network security courses. We had disseminated the results within the ASU education environment. At this time, more than seven computer science and engineering courses had used the lab for their courses. We plan to incorporate more universities to use the system in the following semester. V-Lab helps students to better understand the related course materials through hands-on assignments and projects. Most importantly, it significantly reduces the complexity of running a physical lab, and management overhead. V-Lab helps students and faculties start research-oriented projects, and some of which had developed into research articles. The ASU Fulton School of Engineering intended to use the V-Lab for a broad range of courses. Publications Le Xu, Dijiang Huang, and Wei-Tek Tsai, "Cloud-Based Virtual Laboratory for Network Security Education", accepted to appear in IEEE Transactions on Education, in press 2013. Le Xu, Dijiang Huang, Wei-Tek Tsai, and Robert K. Atkinson, "V-Lab: A Mobile, Cloud-Based Virtual Laboratory Platform for Hands-On Networking Courses", International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning (IJCBPL), Vol 2, Issue 3, pages 73-85, 2012. Le Xu, Dijiang Huang, and Wei-Tek Tsai, "V-Lab: A Cloud-based Virtual Laboratory Platform for Hands-On Networking Courses", In Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE), 2012. Web sitehttps://vlab.asu.edu/ The vLab is a cloud-based virtual laboratory (vLab) environment established on the MobiCloud Platform. It is designed to provide a virtual computer network environment for students with full control of network nodes from the physical layer to the application layer, that can greatly reduce network establishment overhead and provide desired levels of fidelity for course project experiments. The vLab adopts a set of virtualization techniques to implement a customizable, reconfigurable, and isolated real computer networking system. The vLab’s crowdsourcing platform enables interactive and collaborative learning. It will help the course material collection, classification, and filtering, and it can be easily customized for personal as well as for groups of users.
