A transparent and ubiquitous access framework for networking and embedded system laboratories

With the advances in network technology and development of an e‐learning population, using the Internet to realize a distance laboratory has become prevalent and the distance laboratory can be accessed anytime from anywhere. However, it is difficult to present a seamless environment from the traditional physical laboratory into a distance laboratory. Practical devices in the traditional laboratory rarely supported distance access functions, and thus, constructing distance laboratories is difficult and time consuming. Hence, this work presents a distance laboratory framework with transparent and ubiquitous access platforms for various console‐based experiments, especially for networking and embedded system laboratories. The proposed system can support multiple users to access a device at the same time. Thus, students can easily share their experiences with each other to increase cooperative learning chances. Moreover, the proposed framework can be integrated to various distance laboratories and the user can access multiple platforms in one or several distance laboratories at the same time. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework can effectively improve the learning effect and the access platform can be used to increase the utilization of system resources. It can also reduce the cost of conducting laboratories and enhance student learning interest. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 20: 321–331, 2012