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We present a review of experimental studies to excite nonlinear dust waves in a dc glow discharge plasma. The experiments were performed in a vertically positioned glass tube filled with neon and the stratified glow discharge with cold electrodes was created inside it. Dust particles were injected into a plasma and formed ordered structures in the striations. The dust grains were illuminated with a laser sheet and the scattered light was registered with a high-speed digital videocamera with the frame rate of 1000 fps and spatial resolution of 20 μm/pixel. We performed experiments with different techniques of the wave excitation. First, we used the gas-dynamic impact to move the dusty plasma structure with respect to their trap. In this case a large-amplitude wave with two compressional regions separated by a rarefaction was generated. The second wave excitation method was the application of an electromagnetic impulse to the dusty plasma structure. The impulse was created by the discharge of a high-voltage capacitor into a flat coil reeled around the discharge tube. The impulse of the axial magnetic field excited a perturbation. The perturbation had a character of discontinuity of the dust density and velocity. The perturbation was steepening and formed into a dust-acoustic shock. One more method of the wave excitation was developed that allowed to get two pulses. This gives us a possibility to investigate an interaction of waves excited in the dust component and a propagation of waves in a dusty plasma media with changeable dust density as well. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]