Using disruptive technology for explorative learning

Computer Networking is the subject that enables its to build and understand the Internet which in turn ties at the heart of many social and economic transformations that are central to modern society. At the subject's core are the protocols for sending and receiving packets and reporting errors. Although it is a dynamic and naturally engaging subject there are significant barriers which make it difficult for a Student to engage realistically with network 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 use of programming languages to manipulate. This paper advocates the use of disruptive technology, based on the PlanetLab overlay network to support explorative approaches to learning about Computer Networking.