Exjobbs at Laboratory of Communication Networks, IMIT, KTH

The router architecture and audiovisual middleware activities at LCN will run the following exjobbs during 2003.

Adding signaling to the Mphone.
The mphone (also known as the sicsophone) is an open source PC-based audio client that runs on Windows and most Unixes, which focusses on low-latency real-time delivery. The mphone has been used for measuring and performance activities for several years. However, it has a raw interface and needs to be extended with signaling and a graphical user interface for it to be more usable.

The main task of the project is study Voice over IP signaling (H.323, SIP, MGCP) and to add signaling to the Mphone tool. A hot candidate is to use the SIP signaling software in the open source Vocal toolkit.

The secondary task is to device a primitive graphical user interface to the mphone. The GUI should be made on both Linux and Windows. Two potential candidates are Java and html.

Requirements of the student is to be a good application programmer on both Linux and Windows and be acquinted with C/C++ and Java and the GNU programming tools.

Contact Olof Hagsand. [email protected]


Netlink and Software-based forwarding engine.
The LCN router architecture activity is looking at the separation of the forwarding and control planes in an IP router. In this work, we look at how fast special-purpose forwarding engines (FEs) perform the packet forwarding task in real-time, while general purpose processors perform background activity in the controlplane (CEs).

The exjobb will study the feasability of using the Linux netlink protocol to communicate between a software-based FE and a general purpose CE. The result of the projects is to implement a FE for a forwarding application in generic C-code, for example for IPv6 and Diffserv, and adapt it to using the netlink protocol.

Requirements of the student is to be a good unix network programmer, preferrably with some kernel programming experience - in particular linux or bsd.

Contact Peter Sjödin [email protected]


Reference system using Xelerated's X10 .
The LCN router architecture activity is looking at the separation of the forwarding and control planes in an IP router. In this work, we look at how fast special-purpose forwarding engines (FEs) perform the packet forwarding task in real-time, while general purpose processors perform background activity in the controlplane (CEs).

The Xelerated X10 NPU is a new network processor that supports wire-speed forwarding in the range of 40Gbps. It is based on a data-flow architecture where the forwarding plane consists of interleaved stages of programmable pipeline blocks and lookup engines.

The task of the exjobb is to use the Xelerated X10 network processor to make a prototype reference system for a simple functionality, for example an IPv6/Diffserv application. The focus of the exjobb will be on integration aspects between forwarding plane and control plane: many of the components will be available.

The task includes (1) designing and implementing the forwarding plane application in the X10 - using pre-existing assembler blocks; (2) modifying the control plane on a BSD operating system running the Zebra routing suite; (3) adapting the Linux Netlink protocol for the interaction between the two planes.

Most of the initial work will be made in a simulated environment, but we will also expect to run the application on real hardware.

Requirements of the student is to be a good unix network programmer, preferrably with some kernel programming and low-level programming (close to the hardware) experience.

Contact Olof Hagsand. [email protected]


Intel's IXP 1200.
Essentially the same task as the above but with the Intel IXP network processor.

Contact Peter Sjödin [email protected]

The projects will all take place in LCN/IMIT in Kista. Equipment and a place to work will be assigned. There are no funds for covering a salary. If this is required, it has tob