Our "Isolated" Georgia Tech Information Security Center Experimental and Teaching Network:

History of the network and various pictures and diagrams of the early concepts and construction

The Georgia Tech Information Security Center Experimental and Teaching Network is a realistic isolated stand alone network consisting of the following:

1) an emulated “internet backbone”

2) an emulated enterprise that contains firewalls a DMZ, web servers, and emulated production machines (Note all of this proposal is an instructional and experimental network, not a real production network.)

3) an emulated “good ISP” that contains emulated remote office connections and VPNs

4) an emulated “university” that contains no firewalls, has VPN terminations, IPSEC, some in the clear connections, and an access control list

5) a “bad ISP” which is a haven for originating lots of evil hacker activity that we could never implement and instruct  with if we were using a real production network environment

The network is targeted toward a student instructional laboratory where students carry out assigned laboratory exercises. The network is used to construct four Autonomous systems, an emulated “enterprise”, an emulated “good ISP”, an emulated “university”, and an emulated “bad ISP”. These autonomous systems are federated by a fifth autonomous system:  an Information Assurance/Internetworking laboratory “Internet backbone”  The student laboratory is totally isolated from production networks so that exploits and information assurance laboratory assignments do not have the potential to escape and proliferate on any production networks.  

Each Autonomous system tries to represent some of the “typical” network configuration existing in the field:

The network consists of the following equipment along with previously existing networking equipment: