Networks and Distributed Systems

New Organization in January 2010
In January 2010, the Basic Research Unit at Simula was reorganized in 
ten new research groups instead of the old department structure. Please 
visit Basic Research to see the new structure.
This page will not be updated anymore.

Motivation

Computer networks are the nervous systems of modern society. At the same time they are areas of intense development. New classes of applications like interactive massively multiplayer games, utility computing services and multimedia services place new demands on the infrastructure. These demands challenge the stability and predictability of the network infrastructure, the efficiency of the end to end protocols and the architecture and design of the networked severs and terminals. The realization of the full potential of such applications gives rise to major challenges in and between the areas of networking and protocols on one hand, and architecture of routers, switches and servers on the other.

Research Activities

Interconnection networks operate on short distances ranging from on-chip networks to interconnection of clusters. By providing solutions for the robust and flexible interconnection of networked components, we aim to impact the way networked servers, server-clusters and on-chip networks are built and utilized.

Resource consumption in time-critical large-scale distributed systems. By studying the interplay between emerging large-scale distributed applications and the network-, software- and hardware platform they need to run on, we aim to enable operating system- and application support for resource efficiency.

Resilience in network infrastructures. This activity handles challenges to the network service, ranging from failures of components to unforeseen user and application behavior. By understanding and addressing the vulnerability of network infrastructures, we aim to improve network stability. The Resilient Networks project is divided into two smaller projects; the REPAIR project studies more resilient routing methods for large-scale infrastructure networks, while the Resilient Wireless Networks project focus on various wireless technologies.

The department also has strong ties with the Networks and Distributed Systems group at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo.