A fundamental intention for the Centre is to test innovative ideas not only by analytic means and in simulators, but also in real world environments. To realise this a comprehensive laboratory environment is required. The Centre has access to facilities ranging from multimedia laboratories, where acquisition, encoding, decoding and presentation of digitised information is in focus, to a large scale IPv6 experimental network where advanced data transport and resource management experiments can be performed, and implementations related to resource management, dependability and security can be studied. Quantifying results from experiments is essential for the Centre, hence all laboratory facilities provide thorough instrumentation to enable detailed and accurate monitoring.

Among the many research facilities available to researchers at the Centre, the set presented in the figure and paragraphs below represents the main facilities.

The Department of Electronics and Telecommunications has several laboratories two of which have significant interest for the Centre: the Multimedia laboratory and the Aura sound reproduction laboratory. The multimedia lab offers advanced state-of-the-art visual capturing, multimedia processing and streaming, as well as presentation software/hardware, while the Aura lab focuses on high quality 3D audio capturing, processing, transmission and reproduction. Two-way transmission of multi-channel sound is possible between the Aura lab and a portable lab. The Multimedia and Aura Labs are located next to each other and are closely interconnected.

Several current research activities at the Centre make use of the Multimedia and Aura laboratories. Among them are work on scalable, layered and adaptive representation of media streams, techniques for 3D audio and virtual acoustics, and studies of the end user's perceived Quality of Service.

Among the Department of Telematics laboratories the Internet Laboratory, the Teleservice Laboratory and the Caruso Multimedia Laboratory are of special interest to the Centre. The Internet Laboratory known as “Sahara” provides an environment for configuring realistic IP based test networks. A number of computers and dedicated routing hardware is available as well as network emulation equipment. The Department's comprehensive simulation laboratory, with it's processing cluster, has several popular simulation software packages available. The Teleservice Laboratory provides a range of platforms for teleservice development as well as gateways to fixed and mobile telecommunication resources. The Caruso Multimedia Laboratory, a sequel to the Multimedia Laboratory at the Department of Telecommunications, provides audiovisual capturing and processing facilities.

Among the current research activities at the Centre that depend on the Department of Telematics's laboratories, are activities on QoS in overlay network, work on multiparty interactions in dynamic network environments, and fine grained studies of multimedia traffic.

UNINETT manages and operates the Norwegian Research Network, which encompass all Norwegian Universities and colleges as well as most other research institutes. In addition to their production network, UNINETT manages a separate IPv6 test network interconnecting the major telecommunication research institutions in Norway. This national IPv6 network is further connected to the Nordic IPv6 network and thereby also to the 6net European experimental IPv6 network.

UNINETT's measurement laboratory encompass tools for fine grained high capacity passive measurements, including measurement facilities in the production network, as well as comprehensive statistical data through both active and passive measurements.

For all research activities at the Centre where realistic network environments are required, UNINETT is an important resource. Current such activities include studies of streamed multi layered MPEG video through Intserv/Diffserv enabled network segments, research on security issues in high throughput networks, development and testing of new routing and management protocols, and analysis and modelling of complex traffic streams.