The Department of Computer Science at UCLA holds an important place in the history of the Internet as the site of the first ARPANET node (IMP), installed in 1969. Since then, the CS Department has been one of the premier research centers in advanced computer communications and networking in the world. In the area of wireless communications, the UCLA CS Department participated in the 70’s in the DARPA Packet Radio project, with the charge of carrying out performance modelling and measurement tasks, and contributing several seminal papers, algorithms and performance models (including the famous CSMA Markov based model by Kleinrock and Tobagi). Research in wireless data communications has continued to these days under the sponsorship of DARPA as well as Industry (CISCO, Intel, SUN, Nokia). In particular, during the past few years, a research group lead by Prof. Bagrodia and Prof Gerla and consisting of 3 Post Doctoral Researchers and 12 PhD students has developed the GloMoSim simulation platform, a parallel, scaleable simulation environment customised for wireless packet communications and used by hundreds of sites in the wireless ad hoc networking community. In addition to this very successful simulation tool, several ad hoc network protocols were design, developed and evaluated. Some have been submitted as drafts to IETF (eg, ODMRP), and have also been implemented in a wireless testbed consisting of two dozens Linux laptops equipped with WaveLANs.

The networking group led by Prof. Gerla has a long tradition of successful collaboration with European partners, including several NSF-CNR grants (with Italy), and more recently (1998-1999) the PETER PAN ACTS European project, with CSELT, HP, Italtel, etc. In the whyless.com European project UCLA will contribute in the areas of (1) adaptation of mobile applications to the changing characteristics of wireless subnetworks via well defined APIs, and (2) QoS support using the assistance of routing and Network Service Brokers.