It is with great pleasure that I respond to the kind invitation of the BAF project to contribute prefatory remarks to this account of their work, carried out under the auspices of the RACE Programme (Research and Development in Advanced Communications in Europe). The objective of the RACE Programme was to support the intro duction of Integrated Broadband Communications in the European Union. An important part of this overall objective was served by the BAF project, which has aimed to produce a cost-effective access facility for broadband networks, especially for residential and small business customers. As this book relates, in order to do so the project consortium merged two advanced communications technologies, ATM and PON, with contributions from many other disciplines, to create a demon strator which has been subject to extensive trials and testing which have been fruitful both in contributions to international standards and in development work to improve further future generations of the system. This book forms an important reference source through the experience gained in this unique experiment in advanced telecommunications. Another significant feature of the project should not be overlooked however. When the European Commission first began looking at supporting industrial research in Europe in the mid-1980s, it was clear that we had important strengths in telecommunications. It was equally clear that a revolution was on the way - the digital revolution - and European pre-eminence in the field was not guaranteed for ever.

This book provides the reader with a state-of-the-art knowledge on the evolution of communication networks towards global information infrastructure. The symposium specially addressed the issues of interworking to solve the interoperability issues in the heterogeneous networks environment. The articles cover the strategical issues concerning the evolution towards the broadband communication infrastructure with ATM based technologies and related challenge with control and management functionalities to be implemented to provide secure, cost-effective and interoperable high performance networks of the future. The topical issues are well organised to cover the full spectrum of related issues in terms of signalling and management, Multimedia service handling, Traffic management to guarantee the quality of service, interworking between narrow band and broadband networks, interworking issues related with network management, internet, mobile/satellite networks as well as the practical experiences around the world. The book is planned to provide the reader with an overview of the current status of infrastructure evolution direction so that they can plan the appropriate networks taking the futuristic scenarios into consideration.

New Services such as for Internet data and multimedia applications, have caused a fast growing demand for broadband communications. The fundamental technologies for the integration of these services have been developed in the last decade: optical communications, photonic switching, high speed local area networks, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), ISDN and B-ISDN, Internet packet networks and mobile communications. The development was possible through the dynamic progress in communication and computer technologies and through worldwide standardization activities within ITU-T, the ATM Forum, the IETF, IEEE, ANSI, ETSI and other bodies. These developments have been supported by research and field trial programmes. Past developments, such as about LAN, Internet or ISDN networking technologies, have shown that it needs a time span of 10 years for a new technology from its research stage to its full application. Broadband Communications is just at its onset for full deployment. It will have a dramatic effect not only on the networking situation but on the whole development of information technology throughout our social and economic life, which is expressed by the conference theme ,The Future of Telecommunications". The Broadband Communications conference series of IFIP WG 6. 2 addresses the fundamental technical and theoretical problems related with these technologies. BC '98 is the fourth meeting in a series on conferences being held in Stuttgart, Germany. The previous confernces were held in Estoril, Portugal, in 1992, in Paris, France, in 1994, and in Montreal, Canada, in 1996.

"This book presents a comprehensive overview of emerging optical access network solutions to efficiently meet the anticipated growth in bandwidth demand"--Provided by publisher.

This book discusses the structure and performance of networks in the context of the services they provide. Chapters are devoted to public and private networks, ISDN, intelligent networks, mobile radio networks and broadband networks.

Volume B is devoted to light wave systems and system impairments and compensation. Some of the topics include growth of the Internet, network architecture, undersea systems, high speed TDM transmission, cable TV systems, access networks, simulation tools, nonlinear effects, polarization mode dispersion, bandwidth formats, and more. This book is an excellent companion to Optical Fiber Telecommunications IVA: Components (March 2002, ISBN: 0-12-395172-0).Fourth in a respected and comprehensive series- Authoritative authors from a range of organizations- Suitable for active lightwave R&D designers, developers, purchasers, operators, students, and analysts- Lightwave components reviewed in Volume A- Lightwave systems and impairments reviewed in Volume B- Up-to-the minute coverage

This volume contains the proceedings of the NOC 2001 at Adastral park, UK, June 26-29 2001. With about 70 papers, this book highlights the gigabit ethernet PON developments, and other work on standard broadband PONs such as, dynamic bandwith assignment. There are 10 papers on optical packet switiching and work on optical cross-connects and DWDM for long-haul systems is presented.