Network Engineering & Security at DePaul University

Our daily interactions with the Internet are ever-increasing in scale and complexity. What was once a packet delivery system mimicking a postal system is now an intricate multi-tiered structure of protocols and services. The ongoing development and survival of these services depends on our ability to adaptively address challenges such as securing our interactions, scaling with users and devices, and meeting the ever-changing expectations in Quality of Experience and Service Availability.

Today, researchers at DePaul are addressing the aforementioned challenges with an eye towards providing higher service levels and reducing the energy footprint of Internet operations. They are studying how to optimize operations in machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks. New network infrastructures are being developed to operate in ad hoc situations, without relying on the Internet, to mitigate connectivity during power outages and in infrastructure-poor regions. The Internet is profoundly changing on multiple fronts. For example, video content is now dominating web traffic, and we are racing to accommodate nearly 30 billion networked devices by 2023 (CISCO annual report). Thus, we must re-examine every design choice and hold both current and future protocols to highly rigorous standards in development and performance evaluation.

The unique MS Network Engineering and Security (NES) program at DePaul University delivers both the theory and practice behind the design and maintenance of these diverse network infrastructures. Students have access to extensive lab facilities using equipment from Cisco, Juniper, and other manufacturers. Our students get hands-on practice in configuring routers, switches, and firewalls, as well as securing networks, evaluating and managing their performance, and ensuring the they meet business requirements.