Cooper Union's Department of Electrical Engineering will establish an undergraduate Computer Networking Laboratory with the primary goal of studying multimedia (data/voice/image) communications, inter-network connectivity, and network management. To strengthen the Department's traditional emphasis on open-ended practical design projects, the facility will be used primarily as a testbed for implementing and testing innovative hardware/software design projects in several undergraduate courses. In addition, the laboratory will be used for hands-on demonstrations accompanying class lectures in the communications courses and others.The plan calls for a PC-based 16 Mbps Token-ring local area network (LAN) with voice and image capabilities, an X.25 node interfacing to the LAN, and several measurement/test instruments. Student projects will emphasize the design and implementation of interfaces, signal processing, and protocols to support multimedia services on the LAN, interconnection of the LAN to the X.25 node and other systems, and management/monitoring of the networks.
