Evolving towards better architectures for remote laboratories: a practical case

Abstract

A WebLab is a remote laboratory controlled via Internet. Traditionally, the focus on WebLab design has been placed on the hardware side and the communication link between the controlling PC (WebLab server) and the hardware prototype. Little attention has been paid to the other communication segment going from the WebLab server to the remote users' PCs, since this has been regarded as a "solved software problem". Consequently, aspects such as security, scalability, accessibility, or user friendliness have often been disregarded in WebLabs. This situation may be solved if a serious effort is placed on the definition of proper distributed software architectures for WebLabs. In this paper, we describe such ideal software architecture, resulted from an iterative process seeking a web-based, secure, scalable, multi-user, multi-device WebLab.