1. What does Visual Land (VL) do?

It’s an eLearning web site that provides network protocol animation virtual labs and protocol animation publishing tools.

2. What is network virtual lab (vlab)?

Vlab visualizes protocol behaviors with a rich set of animators: topology, packets, router commands, router status, protocol states, events, and dialog bubble text between nodes. There are three types of vlab based on their data sources.
A) Theoretical Vlab. Beginners can get a good idea of the protocol in 20 minutes. It focuses on a few key parameters and events, and skips some details. Protocol data are created manually with EL tools.
B) Router lab Vlab. Packets and status are captured from running routers (virtual and physical routers). Users can examine packet content, check protocol states, and router configuration commands.
C) Simulation Vlab. Packets, parameters, states, and events are generated by network simulation.

3. How is your animation different from PTT, Visio, or Flash?

Vlab uses animation to present network data activities. Data is the core. For example, click a packet and its content are displayed in Pcap-like format. Router status display may change when a node receives a packet or shutdown a link. PPT is a presentation tool that can do simple animation. It cannot handle complex data in packets and tables. Visio is a graphic tool. It does not animate complex data. Flash is an animation creation tool. It does not handle time-sensitive data.

4. Who are your customers?

A) Network knowledge seekers. E.g., students, network professionals, IT professionals, hobbist..
B) Network knowledge providers: Teachers, web tutorial authors, book authors.
C) Corporate product training material developers: Use VL authoring tools to animate training content.

5. What is Visual Land's directions, position, and operation ?

A) Direction. Learning is a big market, eLearning is a fast growing segment in this market. The trend of eLearning is clear. It’s a new alternative of learning. Corporate eLearnoing is a sizable market but still inefficient due to the lack of animation platform and tools. School eLearning is getting more popular, but is not in the main stream.
B) Position. It takes some learning curve and discovery to position new products in an emerging market. Visual Land positions itself in two areas:
i. Animation tool maker. Start at network, can be expanded into other areas later.
ii. Network protocol animation courses. They supplement to books, labs, web tutorials. The goal is to shorten the learning cycle for beginners by 80%. For example, wouldn’t it be great if wikipedia’s network pages are presented by animation?
C) Operations. Keep improving our tools and methodology as a way of life. We don’t know when a new market will take off. But we want to be ready when the time comes. For example, - Software methodology. Move more code into library and toolbox.
- Market research. Bottom up from beginners, teachers, community colleges, universities, web tutorial authors, corporate training, and publishers.

6. Can I see a demo?
Go www.visualland.net. (If you cannot access it from school, try Internet Café or office buildings)