Active Learning with Planetary Objects

The core Internet protocols form a fundamental component of the modern world and it is incumbent on Computer Science and Information Technology curricula to teach them. Yet there are significant barriers which make it difficult for a student to engage realistically with these protocols. These can be categorised as barriers of time, space and access. From the perspective of time, many of the interactions occur at timescales that are outside of the range of human perception; from the perspective of space, a student will be situated in one location which will often define their view of the network; from the perspective of access, interaction with network protocols is mediated through libraries provided by operating systems which in turn require the low level use of programming languages. Overlay networks such as PlanetLab have been advocated as a way of allowing "disruptive" technologies to be experimented with, deployed and developed thereby helping prevent the potential ossification of network protocols. This paper demonstrates how PlanetLab can be exploited within an educational context to overcome the barriers to active learning about computer network protocols.