Home Networking Class

Okay, I'm looking for ideas. I'm going to be teaching a home-networking class here at work in a couple of months. I already have a copy of the stickies here, and I have a good understanding of it. The problem is this class could have 30+ people and it should include some hands on work. There will only be one or two three hour classes. This being the case, bringing my router from home seems like there won't be enough time to review material and get hands on time. Short of buying several routers, I thought using an emulator program would be good. I got the link to the DLink emulator. Is there a more comprehensive emulator program, or a more generic one? Even better, does anybody know of a program that lets you set up a virtual network using virtual switches/computers/routers/etc...?

Go down to your local computer store and ask them if they could let your borrow or rent several cheap routers, that your going to be teaching classess on it.


They'll need proof, of course, but they may help you out.


and the best hands on I can think of, without a router, is setting up a LAN connection with a server computer and several other computers.

networking routers is easy breezy, all you gotta do is plug in the ethernet cord! you barely have to do anything else

Well, I plan to teach them how to reset passwords, do port forwarding, etc.... I can use the DLink emulator for it, but I thought I had heard about a program that you could use to set up a virtual network visually.