It is universally accepted that hands-on laboratory experience is essential for engineering, technology, and science education. In general, available limited laboratory resources pose a major challenge for imparting laboratory education although all laboratory equipments lie idle during most of its lifetime. This is true for both the traditional laboratory classes as well as laboratory courses offered in distance education programs. As the broadband connectivity to the Internet is becoming very common, development of web based (remotely controlled) laboratory has come into play an important role in science and engineering laboratory education, where the learners have much more flexibility in performing the experiments at any time and from anywhere (Laboratory-at-home).

Remote laboratory accessible via Internet is an alternative in which physical (real) laboratory equipment is controlled remotely from a distant location over the Internet. The student can control the equipment and change experimental parameters and view the experimental results from a remote location. In the absence of any common framework, development of an Internet accessible laboratory is a complex task as it involves multiple disciplines such as software, hardware, computer interfacing, Web development, Web security, user interface, and learning management. Development of laboratory management tools for online laboratories is necessary.

In this activity, we (Meridian Software Technology (P) Ltd) have currently been actively involved with the IIT Kharagpur for the development of laboratory management system (NetLAB). The microelectronic devices and VLSI Engineering laboratory is available at http://lod.iitkgp.ernet.in/netlab.