Network Engineering and Security

The BS in Network Engineering and Security (NES) program focuses the theory and practice of designing, deploying and managing both wireless and wired network technologies, including broadband Internet access technologies, interconnection technologies, network convergance and network security. Students have access to extensive lab facilities and get hands-on practice in configuring routers, switches, and firewalls, as well as securing networks, evaluating and managing their performance, and ensuring the they meet business requirements.

Our daily interactions with the Internet are ever-increasing in scale and complexity. What was once a packet delivery system mimicking a postal system is now an intricate multi-tiered structure of protocols and services. The ongoing development and survival of these services depends on our ability to adaptively address challenges such as securing our interactions, scaling with users and devices, and meeting the ever-changing expectations in Quality of Experience and Service Availability. 

Researchers at DePaul are addressing these challenges with an eye towards providing higher service levels and reducing the energy footprint of Internet operations. They are studying how to optimize operations in machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks. New network infrastructures are being developed to operate in ad hoc situations, without relying on the Internet, to mitigate connectivity during power outages and in infrastructure-poor regions. The Internet is profoundly changing on multiple fronts. Video content is now dominating web traffic, and Internet service providers must now accommodate nearly 30 billion networked devices. We must re-examine every design choice and hold both current and future protocols to highly rigorous standards in development and performance evaluation.

For international students: this is a STEM-designated program, which can qualify you to extend your post-graduation stay in the United States.