NEtworking and Telecommunications Research Laboratory (NeTReL) is part of the Computer Science & Electrical Engineering Department at UMKC. Our research covers performance modeling, network design, network routing, network protection and restoration, protocols, optical networking, mobile computing, wireless networking, network security, network software, sensor networks, and so on. Many of our faculty have been supported by federal grants (NSF and DARPA) and industry contracts.

Our educational effort reaches all levels. At the doctoral level, you can choose "Telecommunications & Computer Networking" (TCN) as a primary doctoral discipline in UMKC's interdisciplinary PhD program; one of the few programs in the country to offer TCN as a doctoral discipline. At the Master's level, networking/telecommunications emphasis in the M.S. in Computer Science programs is one of our strongholds; students in M.S. in Electrical Engineering can also take advantage of course work offered in networking/telecommunications. At the undergraduate level, we offer several courses for pursuing a networking concentration within the B.S. in Computer Science (BS-CS) program, for computing resources specialty for the Bachelor of Information Technology (BIT) program, and for electives for the B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering (BS-ECE) program. Please click on the 'coursework' button on the left for more details.


Some tidbits:

Telecommunication & Computer Networking has a strong history in Kansas City. Our Lab has evolved from the inception of the Computer Science Telecommunications Program (CSTP) at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) in 1984 when Sprint Corporation, a leading Telecommunications Networking company (known at that time as United Telecom), headquartered only a few miles from UMKC campus, provided significant funding for setting up an interdisciplinary educational and research program in an agreement with UMKC. United Telecom has its roots going back more than a century to 1899 when the Brown Telephone Company started providing local telephone service in nearby Abilene, Kansas. Unrelated to this history, often little known, the story of automatic electro-mechanical telephone switching also has its roots in Kansas City. This started when Almon B. Strowger, an undertaker in Kansas City, was suspecting that a competing undertaker's wife, who worked as an operator at the local telephone company's manual switch, was directing business to her husband! Obviously, Strowger wasn't very happy. He developed a model for automatic switching for which he was awarded a patent in 1891 (US Patent No. 447918, awarded on 10/6/1891), and he started the company 'Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange' in the same year. Strowger switch is no doubt one of the greatest innovations in the world of networking/telecommunications, and Strowger can be considered the father of automatic switching.

And did you know that Ethereal, the world's most popular Internet network protocol analyzer available in the public-domain, is the creation of our alum, Gerald Combs (BS-CS'93)? Gerald originally wrote the code in 1998 and is still the primary maintainer of its overall growth, extensions and functionalities. Gerald received School of Computing & Engineering's Alumni Achievement Award in 2003.

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Contact:

   Deep Medhi
   Networking & Telecommunications Research Lab
   Computer Science & Electrical Engineering Department
   546 Flarsheim Hall
   University of Missouri-Kansas City
   5100 Rockhill Road
   Kansas City, MO 64110 USA