Project owner/sponsor(s) and contact information

  • Mr. Donald Privitera

Project Overview

Data networking is a complex field. Designing networks is a complex task. Simulators have been developed to create hypothetical designs with configuration settings for evaluating architectures and settings. At least 2 simulators are freely available to IT professionals and students. This project involves researching the landscape of free network design simulators to determine how many there are, then downloading, testing, evaluating, and documenting the features of each by designing, on each, a network with multiple routers, switches, and host devices using IPv4 and IPv6, defining features appropriate for classroom use in a university, and finally determining which solution fits the classroom requirements using a vector shortest distance analysis.

Major expected outcomes and deliverables

  • Identify candidate solutions

  • Install, run, test, document feature sets

  • Define features appropriate for classroom use and use vector shortest distance to identify the software solution which most closely matches. Provide a step-by-step manual how to setup a working network design using routers, switches, and hosts with IPv4 and IPv6 for the winning solution.

Type of work (estimation)

  • Research, analysis, technical, software, applications, project management, vector math

Courses/Skills/Knowledge involved

  • Software acquisition

  • Excel

  • project management

  • math

  • written communication

  • verbal communication

  • presentation

Number of teams and students

1 team, 3 to 5 undergraduate students

Other requirements (such as meetings)

  • Will need to meet with project sponsor virtually for kickoff, milestones, and final deliverables.