Proposal of an internship simulation platform for network security students

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a great impact on the world, paralyzing all the daily activities that the human being had as a routine, whether it was work or school. The latter was an important factor for students because they had to continue studying from home, and as a consequence, laboratory practices that were carried out in the laboratories of educational institutions were cancelled due to the closure of the facilities. For this reason, students lacked knowledge about the configuration of physical devices, because the practices were not carried out. Upon returning to on-site classes, the students had difficulties when starting to maneuver and configure the devices, since this was new to them. Therefore, the creation of a device configuration syntax simulator was proposed, which may have the potential to serve as a guide for those who need some assistance with the topics covered in class. This simulator is intended to facilitate the configuration of commands in the devices when performing physical practices in the networking laboratory of the Institute. It was developed using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP languages, then hosted on a platform where students can access from any device and from anywhere they are. The results obtained were successful, because the platform is consulted and can be accessed from a computer or cell phone anywhere, in addition to being able to perform the basic configuration and security of network devices such as switches and routers in a syntax simulator. It is expected that, thanks to this project, students will be able to reinforce their knowledge and skills for the configuration of network devices, for example: IP address assignment, changing device names, dynamic and static routing, AAA authentication protocol, password recovery, VLAN, trunk links and ACLs.