Recently, advanced network computing systems have been realized as various sorts of computers and resources are connected with each other, owing to prosperity of large-scale networks represented by Internet. In such an environment, resources of network computing, i.e. computers, storage, and mobile terminals should be deployed more efficiently, conveniently, and securely. In our laboratory, we are focusing on a next generation network infrastructure and advanced applications, developing software (middleware) to support them.
The above figure shows an overview of the latest large-scale distributed
network computing environment, in which various kinds of computers and
equipment are connected in a complicated manner. This behaves as if it
were a huge computer system, which executes advanced applications with
its high-performance calculation ability and data processing power.
A typical form of network computing is a client-server model. As a network
becomes complicated and huge on its scale, both a server-side and a client-side
are required to be advanced types.
On the server-side, for example, Cluster systems become huge in some cases,
Grid computing is introduced to have a connection with other sites, and
Cloud computing which regards its resource as a service is realized making
use of a virtualization technique. One of the critical issues in this case
is how a mass volume of data can be processed efficiently, because we are
in the midst of so-called information-explosion age. For this purpose,
new technologies of storage, file systems, and Storage Area Network (SAN)
are developed.
On the client-side, wireless networks become much more important than previously.
Nowadays, wide variety of electronics devices have a power of small computers,
and they are connected to a network with its communication interface. Although
wireless communications are used often in such a case, bandwidth is limited
and the quality is low in the case of wireless communications. Therefore,
higher throughput and guaranteed QoS are desired in this environment.
In our laboratory, we are focusing on important and interesting areas for
research themes in an advanced network computing environment. Therefore,
the research areas range from high-performance computing in the server-side
to mobile networks in the client-side. In addition, while various advanced
applications are focused on, network protocols and operating systems might
be analyzed deeply, if necessary.
Thus we have a relation with a various research field. We intend to develope
next generation infrastructure and advanced applications.