Major in Network Computing

The rapid development of the Internet has significantly changed the computer landscape. The "pre-internet era" mostly consisted of only PC-based and mainframe applications. These were mostly standalone working systems that have basically done their job by themselves. With the distribution of computers and Internet access the situation has changed completely.

While the Internet surfer believes to only be communicating with the Web server, the Web server hosts numerous other computers. In addition to database and application servers, these can also be applications and systems that have been in use for years or decades in companies. But also new programmes are today no longer created as standalone applications but are integrated into an existing computer landscape. For example, a new Internet shop has to access the product database, orders must be sent directly to the system for order management and the total price of the order is immediately debited to the account of customers. Intelligent agents perform autonomous tasks on the Internet and thereby have to communicate with different applications and systems.

In the future, applications will not only communicate over the Internet but also mobile. There are additional problems and challenges to be overcome since user devices are not constantly connected to the Internet. A further trend of decentralized structures such as peer-to-peer networks, pose new requirements for informatics.

Study Goals

Students of Network Computing will particularily deal with distributed applications and systems. Internet architectures, Web services, Web and mobile computing, and security tools will be just as familiar to them, as distributed programming environments, distributed algorithms, network basics, and distributed databases.

The lectures, exercises, internships and projects of students majoring in Network Computing will acquire knowledge and skills in the following areas:

• Functioning and basic principles of wired and mobile networks,
• Fundamentals of distributed systems and applications,
• Basic concepts of security in distributed systems and security technologies including firewalls, application level gateways, encryption technologies,
• programming distributed systems (distributed programming environments, distributed algorithms),
• Technologies for distributed systems (application servers, middleware, web server technologies, P2P)
• Administration of networks, databases and distributed applications

Electives can be selected from a modern and constantly updated offering. Interdisciplinary courses such as rhetoric and presentation techniques, law, informatics and society, and overall project-based courses facilitate the entry for graduates into professional life.

Job Description

Career opportunities for graduates of this major are excellent. They possess general knowledge of software development as well as the specifics of the development of network-based and distributed systems. The combination of innovative technologies with a practical education is highly valued by companies. After completing the challenging studies, the graduates have a multitude of job possibilities in the industry, in service areas and in administration:

• Integration of different software systems into a single consistent system
• Design and implementation of mobile applications,
• Design and implementation of distributed applications, such as online shops, Internet banking systems and other web applications,
• System and network administration.