1. Using PlanetLab in Classroom
Sue B. Moon
EECS, Division of CS
Joint work with Vinay, Zhi-Li, Christophe,

2. Reasons Behind Choosing PlanetLab
Easy to join
Just add 2 PCs and you’re in!
Easy to maintain
No maintenance overhead – they do it for me
Easy to use
Web-based user management
One slice and you’re in to all machines
Easy for students to have global access

3. Class Project Overview
35+ 1st grad students
8 weeks given
Theme: distributed computing/networking
11 teams of 2 ~ 4 students
5 teams actually ran their code

4. In Retrospect What worked
PlanetLab inspired and motivated students to design and implement/experiment on a truly globally distributed system
Students had first-hand measurement experiment and analysis

5. In Retrospect What did not work on my side
PlanetLab boxes installed in the middle of the semester
Students needed more time to forge an idea and implement
Students needed intro-level exposure on how to use PlanetLab
slightly different from just loggin into a Linux box
simple hands-on programming assignment would have done

6. In Retrospect (II) Improvements transparent public key upload process
we did not know when key was uploaded where
unpredictability
frequent individual system failures
entire system shutdown 24hr before deadline (X-mas Eve)!
libraries/tools
not all programming packages installed
system performance viewing
how to monitor what others are doing?

7. Future Plans Deploy a service on PlanetLab More student projects
ongoing security monitoring project
servers run 24x7 on Planetlab
More student projects
Fall 2004
wireless/mobile term projects
Spring 2004
programming assignments/term projects