Computing Curriculum - Protecting network while allowing coding/programming etc

[Archipelego1]

Good afternoon all,

 

Just started a new role and am looking into the requirements of the new computing curriculum around coding and web publishing, while also protecting the network from pupil hacking.

 

My thoughts were that I'd setup some kind of sandboxed environment, which would give pupils access to a 'virtual' environment of some kind. This would then allow them the ability to run code, while safely keeping the live network safe.

 

My question to all is, how have you modified your networks to allow pupils to create and run their scripts and code?

 

I've seen this alluded to on a few threads, but not a definitive answer.

 

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[Davit2005]

Not done this myself but there is a bit on EduGeek regarding using Virtual Box if that is helpful,

[dhicks]

My thoughts were that I'd setup some kind of sandboxed environment, which would give pupils access to a 'virtual' environment of some kind. This would then allow them the ability to run code, while safely keeping the live network safe.

 

If your switches have the capability, a "sandbox" network environment depenedant on the type / frequency / destination / etc of network traffic might be more flexible. If you have switches that can let through normal traffic (requests to Google at 1 page request per second, or whatever), but stop suspicious / wrong looking traffic (i.e. someone writes something that gets stuck in a loop at spews out 1,000 HTTP requests per second). We plan to do this with OpenFlow and an SDN controller, although getting the time to actually put this in place is proving tricky.