Our Network Lab — An Innovative Component of the MINT Graduate Degree Program
The MINT program at the University of Alberta was created to meet industry needs for an accredited graduate degree program in Internetworking. This initiative links academics and industry to cooperatively resolve problems, while providing graduates with the broadest education and exposure to the world beyond the classroom. In pursuing a graduate education, students apply their theoretical knowledge in the lab to ensure there is a practical connection between the classroom and the real world. In this state-of-the-art environment, students learn to build, break, tweak, and re-build better networks.
Earn Your MINT Master’s Degree in a State-of-the-Art Facility in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
The MINT lab is continually renewed and kept up-to-date with new acquisitions. The program was first started with new equipment donated by Cisco Systems Inc. and TELUS Inc. To that, we have added a high-speed OC-192 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.
Students enrolled in the Master of Science in Internetworking graduate degree program have 7×24 hands-on access to all of this equipment in a free learning environment. MINT lab hardware and software is upgraded frequently.