Our Network Lab

Enrolling in the University of Alberta Master of Science in Internetworking (MINT) program gives you 24-hour a day access to our state-of-the-art lab facilities.

With full-time access to the very latest hardware and software in the industry.

The MINT program will require you to design new software and hardware configurations to solve problems or improve performance. Working in our multi-million dollar MINT network lab means you will always have access to what is needed for these activities and advancements.

Your learning will always be up-to-date because the technology in the MINT lab is updated annually.

When our program started in 2004, new equipment was generously donated by Cisco Systems Inc. and TELUS Inc. Since then we have added a high-speed OC-48 optical ring, new edge routers, and a diversity of last-mile technologies including ADSL, VDSL and GPON.

Most student work is done in four sets of team racks; each set includes copper and optical LAN routing and switching, CPU servers for load generation and termination, an optical ring node, and an edge router for ring grooming. Additional shared equipment in the lab includes:

  • Routers for connecting WAN links to the optical ring.
  • IPTV servers - used to broadcast video over the Internet.
  • VoIP servers and soft switch - used to manage IP phones and voice gateways.
  • IP Phones - IP telephony end user devices.
  • DSLAMs - used to concentrate ADSL access links.
  • Hardware traffic generator/analyzer.

Check out photos from our lab