Implementation of a Platform for Computer Security and Network Labs

Abstract

Networking is a domain with a strong growth due to the interest of both industries and individuals. It leads to an high increase of the demand of expert in the domain. More and more courses at the University of Liège tackles parts this subject from basic concepts to advanced ones such as network security. To be prepared for active life, the students have to attend practical labs. However, it is not possible to provide physical devices for each student, therefore, software are used to emulate the networks. As the currently used software are quite old and new courses with new requirements are created, the purpose of this thesis is to find a software with additional features to handle both old and new labs.

The CORE emulator has be selected from a pool of fifty software because it is an lightweight and up-to-date emulator, which comes with multiple features. It has been installed in a virtual environment to be port easily on various machines, then a plugin has been implemented to increase its user-friendliness. Finally, the network scenarios of several courses had been ported on the CORE software to identify its advantages, drawbacks and limitations and to provide a pool of application examples for further scenarios.

This work has highlighted the panel of possibilities and features offered by the CORE emulator which can be compared to the ones of the software that are currently used. Moreover, it has shown how easy it is to create a plugin for the software in order to modify and customise it.