This award provides an experimental network to serve as a test- bed for student projects, including both class projects and undergraduate research projects. These projects include the design and testing of protocols, the development of network applications, the management of networks, and the development of distributed systems. Students, through the use of this network, gain hands on experience in network system programming and the development of applications for local area networks. The School of Sciences at SIUE supports two summer research projects: the junior year summer year research program and the minority summer research program. Many of the projects have been designed with these programs in mind. The network consists of six UNIX based workstations that are connected by a complete point-to-point topology as well as through an Ethernet bus. This innovative connection scheme allows for a wide variety of projects and laboratory exercises, including the study of multipoint routing. In addition, the network is connected to the department's existing Ethernet through a gateway allowing students to develop projects without interfering with the operation of the existing network by disconnecting the gateway from the department's network. Later, after a student's project has been thoroughly tested, it can be run on a larger network by reconnecting the gateway.
