A Reservation and Equipment Management System for Secure Hands-on Remote Labs for Information Technology Students

Distance education programs in Information Technology (IT) suffer from several unique challenges. First, technology equipment like computers, routers, switches, and Information Security hardware is expensive and could easily consume a large portion of a department´s annual budget. Second, suitable access to the equipment by students is often limited to normal faculty workdays, excluding evenings and weekends. Finally, adapting labs for delivery through any means other than the traditional classroom environment is extremely difficult in terms of resources, development time, and commitment from faculty and administrators. In this paper, the authors present an in-house solution that was developed to allow students to reserve computers, routers, and switches via the Internet; conduct their hands-on exercises at their convenience, save/restore their configurations and exercises, and automatically restore the equipment to neutral state for the next user