An integrated virtual and physical network infrastructure for a networking laboratory

Traditional physical networking components form the basis of the Internet and the backbone of most enterprise networks. Virtual networking is essential in connecting virtual machines among themselves and to the physical world in any virtualization platform. In order to produce work ready IT graduates with practical, hands-on networking experience, it is desirable to provide an integrated virtual and physical networking infrastructure to conduct laboratory tasks. This paper presents such an infrastructure enabling lecturers to design and set up experiments in not only traditional networking topics such as RIP, OSPF, BGP, and VLAN using a combination of physical and virtual networking devices, but also in the latest technologies such as server virtualization and network virtualization.