Laboratory of Advanced Network Technologies was founded in 2002 by the  MU, Ústavem výpočetní techniky MU and the CESNET asociation as a joint workplace for research and development of advanced network technologies and aplications.

Integrated collaboration environments (ICE) are our primary field of application, that binds together most of the research and development work in the laboratory. The complex nature of ICE rests on  many aspects — e.g., network technologies needed for high-speed transfer and multi-point distribution of data, multimedia processing and optimalization of user-environment interaction. While ICE can be utilized in many various ways, our laboratory focuses especially on telemedicine applications (real-time video transfers of medical operations, remote consultations, atlas of pathology), colaborative tools for group interaction, cinematography and the support of research and education. Our second field of application are grid environments and high-performance&high-throughput computing, which profit from our close connection to Supercomputing Centre Brno.

Both aforementioned fields of application are supported by research and development in several technological domains, that is also done in our laboratory:

• optic networks
  done chiefly in collaboration with the CESNET association and it’s CzechLight activity, which focuses on design of network components for multi-point distribution of data on optic level, utilization of direct access of end-stations onto CESNET2 backbone network and CzechLite network protocols for high-speed networks
• network protocols
  development of protocols for multi-point data distribution and protocols for transfer of multimedia stream over high-speed networks (e.g., for the UltraGrid system); as a part of our research on ICE, we also work with protocols for video/teleconferencing  technologies (H.323, SIP)
• security in heterogeneous computer network environments
  federated security architectures, security within ICE and grid systems
• algorithms for paralel and distributed procession of multimedia
  development and parallelization of multimedia coding algorithms (interactive as well as asynchronous), processing parallelization on distributed virtual routers and programmable active elements
• planning in distributed systems
  algorithms for planning interactive multimedia transfers and task scheduling in grid systems
• self-organizing systems, application orchestration and workflow
  orchestration of interactive multimedia applications, self-organizing systems for multimedia distribution (e.g., CoUniverse system)
• haptic human-computer interaction
  models of haptic interaction with soft tissue, molecule interaction for simulations in computational chemistry
• utilization of GPU for acceleration of parallelized algorithms
  accelaration of computation for haptic interaction by using GPUs, parallelization of video compressing algorithm for the GPU architecture
• user interface design
  new methods and/or optimalization of human computer interaction within ICE

A more detailed information about individual projects is accesible on the Projects page. Publication activity, which is an integral part of the research done in our laboratory, is summarized on the Publication page.

Researchers in our laboratory have access to a unique set of equipment — from high-end commercial systems (e.g., stereo projection in HD resolution or a wide range of videoconferencing apparatuses) to systems of our own construction, part of which has been developed in a cooperation with our foreign partners and commercial companies (e.g., optic multicast switch or a SAGE display with the resolution of 55 megapixels). Laboratory network connection consists of an internal 10Gb/s connection (currently 16x 10Gb/s), direct access to the CESNET2 backbone (currently 3x 10Gb/s), including the possibility of access to dedicated DWDM channels for particular application and optically transparent ingress to an experimental CzechLight network. Our laboratory has access to a first-class foreign connectivity through the CESNET association, which is provided not only by the common GEANT2 connection, but also by dedicated links within the GLIF network (e.g. Starlight in Chicago, NetherLight in Amsterdam).

The laboratory is a natural educational workplace at Masaryk university, where all under-gradute, graduate and doctoral students can participate on the ongoing research as well as work on their theses. A specialized seminar takes place in the laboratory each semester.

The laboratory collaborates with a wide range of foreign and local sites. Our main foreigns partners are Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), University of Illinios at Chicago and Center for Computation & Technology (CCT), Louisiana State University. Beyond the already mentioned institutes at MU, the laboratory collaborates also with the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science (ITI) with joint projects on formal specification and verification of protocols. The laboratory also cooperates with commercial partners, e.g., companies  CinePost a Orange & Green.

Our laboratory has created and operates an unique system for recording and processing lectures or other events, which is deployed to support life broadcasting and archiving of lectures at MU. This system utilizes our research results for efective processing of multimedia data on computer clusters. Laboratory staff also coordinates (as a part of our connection to ÚVT MU) the deployement of audiovisual, videoconferencing and other ICE systems through the whole MU, especially in the new MU campus, which is currently in construction.