The Multimedia Communications / Communication Networks Lab was founded in 1996 at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and is located in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology and the Department of Computer Science. Originally, this was the Volkswagen Endowed Chair for "Industrial Process and System Communication".

Seamless multimedia communication has the potential to create a future where people from all over the world live, collaborate, and communicate independent of geographical constraints. The communication and information systems that support this collaboration have to be performant, dependable, secure, and adaptable to user requirements.

Therefore, future architectures for the Internet have to provide and utilize Quality of Service mechanisms. We actively investigate these in the scope of context-aware heterogeneous IP-based infrastructures, including advanced peer-to-peer and ad hoc networking technology. Innovative multimedia service interfaces and gateways facilitate the required seamless communication.

Our research towards this vision is centered on different technologies. While focusing on science, we never lose sight of applications, and user requirements. Therefore our focus is on carefully selected application areas.

Different foundations and basic concepts are explored spreading our application areas and technology areas. To proof our results we implement prototypes and use different evaluation methodologies. We also participate in the development of evaluation methodologies.

Our projects are funded by different sources ranging from national and international public funding up to industry.

Prof. Dr. Björn Scheuermann has been building up the Communication Networks Lab since 2021. After a transition period of four years, he will take over KOM completely. Previously, Björn Scheuermann held the Chair of Computer Engineering at HU Berlin.

The Multimedia Communications Lab has been headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ralf Steinmetz since its foundation in 1996. In addition to his work as chair holder, Ralf Steinmetz is, among other things, a representative of the state of Hesse for information and communication technology and has been a member of the Hessian Technology Advisory Board since 2005. He is also spokesman for the DFG Collaborative Research Center "MAKI," which has been researching the Internet of the future since 2013. Ralf Steinmetz was the first German to be named an IEEE and ACM Fellow. He has received an honorary doctorate from RWTH Aachen University.

Every year we retreat for a few days at Darmstädter Haus in Kleinwalsertal to discuss teaching and research at KOM. A few impressions from our retreat 2022: