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About The Program
What is the MINT Program?
The master of science in internetworking (MINT) is a two-year, fully-accredited, course-based program designed to develop expert leaders in networking. Jointly offered by the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Science, this program is uniquely led by industry experts, ensuring real-world relevance.
Why Choose This Program?
The MINT program is ideal for working professionals, offering a two-year, fully-accredited, course-based curriculum. Primarily delivered in an intensive weekend format to accommodate weekday employment and led by industry experts, students benefit from 24/7 access to multi-million dollar laboratory facilities, ensuring practical, hands-on experience in internetworking.
Program Information
Degree
Master of Science in Internetworking
Specializations
- Network Security
- Advanced Routing and Network Management
- Wireless and Optical Networks
- Cloud Networking
2
years
for network professionals
2
faculties
Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of ScienceFlexible delivery
Held on alternate weekendsProgram Objectives
- Provide theoretical and practical grounding: To equip students with a deep understanding of data communications and Internetworking principles.
- Develop technical and project management abilities: To enable students to manage technical projects and companies operating in the Internetworking sector.
- Offer specialized knowledge: To cover essential areas like protocols, application programming, modeling, simulation and security in Internetworking.
- Integrate coursework with practical experience: To provide hands-on laboratory experience and a final project to apply acquired skills.
Learning Outcomes
- Design and architect a network infrastructure for maximum security, reliability and scalability, under economic and technical constraints.
- Plan network hardware and software upgrades and develop migration plans to optimize the performance of the network.
- Analyze trends in computer networks and telecommunications.
- Interpret the differences between competing networking hardware and software products and determine the most effective investment.
- Manage and troubleshoot existing Internetworking systems.
- Work in a team environment, both as a team member, and as a team leader.
- Measure network performance and take steps to improve performance.
- Model and simulate an existing network to determine operating parameters, weaknesses and areas of improvement.
- Write new network protocols or software components.
- Design new network hardware to serve a specific purpose.
- Understand the theory behind computer networks, hardware, algorithms, software and their limitations.
Careers
- Network systems
- Network hardware
- Network software
- Network administrator
- Network manager
- Cryptography
Course Highlights
The Physical Layer covers transmission media, including copper, optical fiber and wireless technology. Topics consider modulation and coding standards, framing, error control techniques and MAN and WAN physical layers.
This course provides an introduction to layered data communication protocols, and focuses primarily on issues related to the data link layer. Functionality required from the data link layer will be discussed, including error detection, automatic repeat request procedures, flow control, framing, and medium access control. HDLC and PPP protocols for point-to-point links will be discussed. An overview of local area, metropolitan area, and personal area network protocols will be given, including discussion of Ethernet, WiFi, WiMax, and Bluetooth. Interconnection of local area networks, and wide area networks will also be discussed, with specific attention given to SONET/SDH, Frame Relay, ATM, and MPLS.
The overall goal of this course is to get you to the point that you're able to look at network traffic "on the wire", explore and diagnose protocol interactions, understand IP addressing, forwarding and routing, and finally be able to create some basic protocols yourself. The course presents the basic concepts and tools you will need to understand network traffic, diagnose problems, and understand how and why particular configuration items are required in switches, routers and endpoint hosts.
Internet Applications and Programming covers concepts of Internet applications, such as sockets, client-server programming, proxies and gateways, and application programming. Some specific application protocols (SMTP, SSH) are examined along with their implementation. There may also be source code inspection exercises.
This course will acquaint the student with the practical aspects of using and configuring network devices (routers, switches and hosts), both in terms of physical cabling and setup, and in terms of logical configuration from the console. By the end of the course, students should be comfortable commissioning and configuring small/medium networks and services on their own, debugging problems with these networks, and assessing and reporting the performance of applications using these networks.
MINT 709 is a project course and requires the completion of a significant implementation or experimental study under the direction of a faculty member.
Connect with us
Advising hours are Monday to Friday, from 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Graduate Advisors (MEng and MSc): ecegadv@ualberta.ca
Graduate Admissions: engg.gradadm@ualberta.ca
MEng and MSc: eceadv@ualberta.ca
Graduate Admissions: engg.gradadm@ualberta.ca
Admissions: engg.gradadm@ualberta.ca