Undergraduate hands-on senior capstone project experience on emerging mobile IPV6 technology

In this paper, we detail how a senior student´s desire to pursue a challenging Senior Capstone project in networking and mobility paved the way to the development of a networking environment where hands-on research at the undergraduate level on topics, such as, Mobile Internet Protocol version 6 (MIPv6) is readily feasible. Undergraduate students face many obstacles when pursuing hands-on projects requiring laboratory equipment not readily available in undergraduate laboratories. We describe how Open Source Software and Virtualization platforms were configured and deployed by a student and his advisor to successfully complete a MIPv6 hands-on project. The environment was developed using Linux, VMware, and GNS3. In addition to the technical aspects of this project a second unintended, but important, outcome is described. At the onset, the student and his advisor assumed that the student had the prerequisite Linux knowledge and skills necessary to create the technical environment required to complete this project. When it became clear, despite the student´s best efforts, that his Linux knowledge and skills were insufficient to complete the project, the advisor, with no prior Linux Kernel related experience, had to learn it and provide guidance to the student. The student saw firsthand how his advisor, an experienced researcher, had to overcome a problem in a domain outside his core expertise as a normal part of the research process.