Fuh-Gwo Chen Assistant Professor, department of Computer Science and Information Management,

1. Cooperative Learning of Network Firewalls with Lesser Cognitive Load on a Dedicated Virtual Networking Lab Fuh-Gwo Chen Assistant Professor, department of Computer Science and Information Management, HungKuang University

2. Outline • Introduction • Dedicated virtual networking lab • Learning of network firewalls • Cooperative manner • Lesser cognitive load • Conclusions

3. Introduction • Network firewalls are important components in the internet world. Computer-science students need to learn building network firewalls at all. • It is hard to build a physical lab for learning network firewalls for every learner. It needs a lot of dedicated computers. At least, four computers are needed to make two LANs in a standalone learning space of single student. • Virtual machine software, such as VMware or Virtual PC, could be used to build a virtual networking lab dedicated to single learner.

4. Introduction – cont. • To succeed in building network firewalls , students need to cooperatively work for interconnecting machines. • Packaged Linux security distribution, IPCop, is introduced to lessen cognitive load in learning network firewalls without building the basic knowledge of underlying OS on which security infrastructure built. • In one word, we successfully teach network-firewall learning in a general computer room.

5. Dedicated virtual networking lab • A dedicated networking lab is built on a personal computer with virtual machine software, VMware. • More than two virtual computers are created with VMware. • The network configuration of virtual computers could be direct or indirect connection to the Internet.

6. Dedicated virtual networking lab – cont.

7. Learning of network firewalls • Implementing basic functions of network firewalls • NAT, DHCP, Port-forwarding, etc. • Cooperative work • Individual task – connecting a computer (Windows XP) to the Internet via a network firewall (IPCop). • Team task – interconnecting two LANs with VPN function.

11. Conclusions

12. Thank you ^_^