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Visual Network Simulator To Teach Basic Networking?

Posted by timothy on from the sounds-like-a-good-video-game-too dept.

unteer writes "I am a US Peace Corps volunteer currently teaching a computer technician course at a technical college in Kenya. My students have all completed the Kenyan equivalent of high school and have been accepted into a program where they give a year of nation-building non-military service in return for a technical education. My students' course load includes an introduction to computer networking, and this is where my problem lies. Do any of you know of a visual network simulator that can create an interactive network map that allows me, the instructor, to manipulate various components of a network, including the physical media, routing configuration, and which applications are being used to submit data? An example would be to have a visual of the differences between mail traffic and web traffic, and be able to show how the configuration of a wireless network might be different from a wired network. I know this may seem silly, but visuals of all this are critical to getting ideas across. It doesn't even have to be technically accurate, but rather just pictorially accurate, possibly just labeling the various components correctly. Also, it would be highly preferable if it ran on Linux, as I teach using FOSS only."

7 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Cisco Packet Tracer by MikeK7 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The idea is not silly at all. When I did a Networking Fundamentals subject, we used Cisco Packet Tracer to do most of what you mentioned above. Unfortunately, it isn't exactly FOSS.

  2. Visual Netkit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Visual Netkit project may interest you.
    http://code.google.com/p/visual-netkit/

  3. OMNeT++ is available for free for academic use. by gabort · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi, I would advise to try OMNeT++ it is widely used at various universities. The source code is open, and you can use it for free for non-profit and academic purposes. You can make it as simple, or as complicated as you like. Simulations can be explored live, and there is a useful animation and sequence chart feature that will make complex processes easier to communicate and understand. some links to look at: www.omnetpp.org main community page. This walkthrough of the INET Framework might actually be useful: http://www.omnetpp.org/doc/INET/walkthrough/tutorial.html To get a feel for the whole thing, I suggest you check out some of the videos (for example, the one titled "Using the IDE" from here: http://www.omnest.com/web-demos.php Or get some working demos (still the old version, but the idea is the same) from here: http://www.omnest.com/download-demosim.php I hope that helps.

  4. try GNS3 by bhenson · · Score: 5, Informative

    I use GNS3 located at http://www.gns3.net/ and it works very well and is very easy to learn and teach others to ues

  5. GINI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    GINI (GINI is not Internet) http://cgi.cs.mcgill.ca/~anrl/projects/gini/ is a toolkit for creating virtual micro Internets for teaching and learning computer networks. It will run on both Linux and Windows.

  6. ns2 / nam by happylight · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not sure if it's exactly what you want but check out ns2 / nam. It's a pretty good network simulator. It's open source and runs on linux.

  7. GNS3 / Dynamips by WML+MUNSON · · Score: 5, Informative

    GNS3 is OSS. It runs best on a system with lots of RAM and a multi-core processor.

    All you need beyond the initial download is a router image file (Cisco 7200, etc).

    Enjoy!