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Department of Information Network Systems [NS]

With their rapid development in the late 20th century, typified by the Internet, network technologies have now become an indispensable part of the infrastructure of our information society. In addition, network usage patterns and network configurations are becoming increasingly diverse, and a wide variety of networks oriented to a "ubiquitous" society are being investigated and introduced at an accelerating rate.
In view of this rapid evolution and diversification of information networks, the Department of Information Network Systems will focus on basic technologies that support a diversity of communications in various human and social information systems, in order to pursue education and research aimed at information networks offering enhanced functions, higher performance, and higher reliability; at more advanced computer technologies to support such systems; at the realization of advanced information systems through the application of such networks; and at the development of theories to form the basis of network information communications.

Laboratories

Laboratory for Network and Information Theory

One of the fundamental areas of theory for support of information network technology is the discipline of information theory, relating to information capacity and encoding. Information theory is a mathematical theory based on the concept of probability, and it is deeply connected to both statistics and physics. In the Laboratory for Network and Information Theory, studies will focus on information theory and a variety of related fields. Areas of research will include problems inherent to information theory, such as data compression and communications channel encoding; frontier subjects such as information spectra theory, quantum information theory, and information geometry, and encryption systems based on information theory-derived concepts. Students will explore these subjects through laboratory seminars and tutorials, studying both the fundamentals and the latest research findings in the field, and then move on to their own research.

Laboratory for Network Architecture

This laboratory looks at various kinds of networks, such as mobile and high-speed Internets, and ad hoc networks, with education and research focused on network-related considerations such as network configuration methods, communications protocols, and network operation methods. Students will pursue the study of the architecture of information networks from a broad perspective, through the study of a wide range of communications protocols, including TCP, IP, and mobile IP (including v6); real-time protocols; multicasting; routing protocols; ad hoc network protocols; LAN and other layer-2 protocols; and P2P signaling protocols. The Laboratory for Network Architecture is affiliated with NICT\the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.

Laboratory for Network Computing

In the Laboratory for Network Computing, students will integrate both the software and hardware aspects of information systems composed of computers and networks. Topics of research will include routing algorithms, designs of routers, cloud computing, calculations on cluster systems, home networks, security, data mining, web mining, and distributed monitoring systems. The Laboratory for Network Computing is affiliated with KDDI laboratory.

Laboratory for Application Networking

This laboratory is dedicated to education and research into a broad range of applications, extending from methodologies for the construction of various network application systems to the evaluation and commercialization of such systems, making use of advanced information transmission network technologies, including the Internet. Students will work to devise new network utilization methods from the perspective of application users\such as the network transmission of audio and video via multicast communications, scalable encoding that is adaptable to a diversity of user demand, semantic Web technology for multimedia use, and direct image processing from MPEG data\and making use of probability theory, information theory, algorithm analysis and other techniques to evaluate the performance of these methods, they will develop high-reliability, high-quality network application systems. The Laboratory for Application Networking is affiliated with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Laboratory for Network Security

In the Laboratory for Network Security, education and research will cover a variety of basic technologies for ensuring the security and reliability of information networks used in the increasingly diverse range of information communications systems. Students will study practical subjects\including protocols for data security, signature authentication, and key management; digital watermarking, which is a core data security technology; electronic fingerprinting; steganography; and essential network encoding in multiuser environments, typified by the Internet\and on the basis of research into encryption theory, information theory, encoding theory and number theory, they will develop useful implementations of security protocols.

Departments and Laboratories