University News Last updated 24 February 2020
NETLAB consists of six racks of networking equipment, 2,025 virtual machines, 469 pods and 160 physical devices (routers, switches and firewalls) in Millennium Point. It can run 64 pods concurrently – the maximum the system currently allows – and each pod can have more than one student accessing it at the same time, providing lab access remotely in a safe, sandboxed environment.
It includes equipment relating to the School of Computing and Digital Technology’s status as a Cisco and Juniper academy, and will shortly also have equipment from cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, ready for when we become one of their academies in September.
It received a major £300,000 upgrade last summer, to ensure it continues to give students access to the very latest technology, and is one of only a small number currently available in UK universities.
Over 7,000 hours of learning have been delivered to users since September – more than the whole of the 2018/19 academic year.
Pictured: Networking equipment at BCU.