Achmad Basuki

Collaborating Remote Computer Laboratory and Distance Learning Approach for Hands-on IT Education

This paper studies the innovative methodology for developing IT education from the traditional face-to-face model to full capability of distance learning by combining a remote computer laboratory and a distance e-learning environment. There are three approaches presented with different implementations of laboratory technologies and learning models. The design challenge is to address the limitations of resources at region-wide learning sites, cost-effectiveness and scalability. Computer virtualization and StarBED computing testbed can achieve a larger scale of laboratory size with less cost of equipment and administration workload. The live learning environment ensures quality of realtime communications during lecture and lab sessions by employing IPv6 Multicast on a satellite UDLR network. The self-paced learning environment is proposed to enable a flexible schedule, resource reusability, and scalability. The lab supervision system is the key component to enhance teaching effectiveness in the self-paced hands-on practice by systematically automating the lab supervision skills of lecturers. These approaches have been evaluated as feasible, cost-effective and scalable by the real implementations of similar Asia-wide workshops. Trade-off overheads and analysis on technology and pedagogy perspectives are made to compare their characteristics.

Educational environment on StarBED: case study of SOI Asia 2008 Spring Global E-Workshop

Hands-on experiences are indispensable to train IT operators. However, it is often difficult to conduct hands-on practices in many locations due to lack of resources such as PCs and network equipments. The cost of gathering lecturers and participants at one hands-on site is another possible problem in this situation. Utilization of remotely located hands-on environment is one of the solution to solve these problems. StarBED is a testbed facility for conducting network experiments. Installation of any OSes, adjusting the network topologies according to the requirements can be easily realized utilizing StarBED and SpringOS. A software suite, SpringOS, was developed exclusively for automating the experiment setups in StarBED. This facility could be used to address the problems of lack of resources and high cost for traveling. This research conducted a region-wide remote hands-on workshop utilizing the StarBED inviting 42 participants from 10 Asian countries. The workshop was designed so that the remote participants do not have to travel to single place, and prepare same specification PCs at each site. Through the collected data and feedback, the proposed workshop model was proved to be feasible and effective. This paper describes the requirements and approaches for region-wide remote hands-on workshop utilizing StarBED for building target hands-on environment. As the contents of the conducted workshop could be applied to the general IT human resource development programs, this paper could be useful for the future remote hands-on programs to train IT operators.

A Remote Hands-on Exercise Environment for an Asia-Wide Real-Time Workshop

This paper discusses the problems of conducting a real-time workshop, where the instructors and the participants are located in different places, and the participants should perform hands-on lab exercises using computers that are located in another place. To address this problem, we implemented a remote hands-on exercise environment using virtual machines and a low-bandwidth remote console access. In this environment, the instructors can monitor each participants exercise progress thus they can give specific feedbacks to the participants. We evaluated this environment using a real-time online workshop. We found that it was easy to setup, and participants had a good user-experience using this environment

ODMT: On-demand Inter-domain Multicast Tunneling

The tussle in IP multicast, where different enablers have interests that are adverse to each other, has led to a halt in inter-provider multicast deployment and created a situation in which enabling inter-domain multicast routing is considered a deterrent for network providers. This paper presents ODMT (On-demand Inter-domain Multicast Tun- neling), an on-demand inter-provider multicast tunneling that is autonomous in operation and manageable through its definable policy control. In the architectural design, we propose a new approach of enabling inter-provider multicast by decoupling the control-plane and forwarding-plane. Focusing on the control-plane without changing the forwarding- plane, our solution changes the traditional open multicast service model into a more manageable service model in inter-domain multicast operation, hence it eases the Internet-wide multicast deployment.