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Cyber Range Technical Requirements

Note

This article covers technical requirements for the Cyber Range, but network traffic may be limited by your schools' network restrictions. Please see our article titled Cyber Range Network Restrictions for more information.

What is required to use the Cyber Range?

All you need for a smooth experience on the Cyber Range is a modern web browser and a good network connection. From a birds eye view, the factors that can impact your graphical exercise environment experience on the Cyber Range are:

  • Operating Systems: Since the Cyber Range is browser-based, it can be accessed from any operating system (including Windows, macOS, Chrome OS, etc.) with a web browser installed.

  • Display Resolution: For the best experience with exercise environments in the Cyber Range, we recommend a display resolution of 1920x1080.

  • Web Browsers

  • Browser Plugins/Extensions

  • Network Bandwidth

  • Network Latency

Supported Browsers

The Virginia Cyber Range is designed to run on the latest version of HTML5-compliant web browsers. For the most seamless experience possible, we recommend using one of the following web browsers when navigating the Cyber Range:

You can evaluate how fast your own web browser is by visiting SPEED-BATTLE. If your score is below average, your experience in the Cyber Range may be slower. If you are having trouble logging into your account, please see our troubleshooting article titled, Can't Login to Cyber Range Exercise Area Account, which has a section focusing on Browser troubleshooting.

Browser Plugins/Extensions

Keep in mind that certain plugins/extensions can slow down your browser (such as privacy plugins or VPNs), and disabling them can increase your performance if your browser is feeling sluggish. Please see the following links below to learn how to manage your extensions in your preferred browser.

For relative understanding of bandwidth requirements, it takes approximately 4-5Mbps to stream Netflix video content. If you can watch Netflix from your device, your internet connection has more than enough bandwidth to use a Cyber Range exercise environment, which only takes 1-2Mbps. However, please keep in mind that sharing a home or work network with multiple concurrent users streaming video content may impact your graphical desktop experience on the Cyber Range (as can things like connecting over VPN). You can test your bandwidth with a SpeedTest .

The biggest negative impact to Cyber Range user experience is not bandwidth, but rather network latency, or "ping time". Connections with less than 50ms of ping time are ideal and will allow for a responsive experience. Over 100ms you begin noticing sluggishness, and anything over 200ms is less usable and more frustrating. VPN and satellite Internet connections are the biggest culprits of high latency. Ping time can also be tested with a SpeedTest.

Have a Question? Contact Support

We're here to help you. If you still have questions after reviewing the information above, please feel free to submit a ticket with our Support Team and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.