Internetworking and the Information Highway

As we are heading into the information era, computer networking is playing an ever increasing role in building our future information highway across Canada. iBy making use of various technologies such as fibre optics, internetworking offer many capabilities and address many issues that are required by the infrastructure for the national information highway. For example, its capability in interconnecting varous types of networks (e.g., LAN, MAN) enhances existing services, and its capability in service integration introduces new applications such as those in multimedia communication. IP and mobile communication are two examples of the latest technologies that would take advantage of internetworking. Much R&D work still needs to be done in various challenging topics.

The Computer Communication Network Research Group conducts research in the design, modelling, analysis and performance evaluation of Metropolitan Area Networks, their protocols, services and architecture in order to realize the future information highway. Students of various backgrounds (networking, control, queuing, etc.) are required for R&D in network topology, switch architecture, ATM traffic control and management, traffic characterization, B-ISDN/multimedia communication, system reliability, LAN-interconnection, voice, IP and mobile communications. Our latest collaboration with industry involves various traffic engineering issues (QoS and restoration etc) on photonic networks.