This volume is a compendium of papers presented during the NATO Workshop which took place in Capri, Italy, October 12-18, 1986 on the general subject of "Flow Control of Congested Networks: The Case of Data Processing and Transportation", and of which we acted as co-chairmen. The focus of the workshop was on flow control methodologies, as applied to preventing or reducing congestion on: (1) data communication networks; (2) urban transportation networks; and (3) air traffic control systems. The goals of the workshop included: review of the state-of-the-art of flow control methodologies, in general, and in each of the three application areas; identification of similarities and differences in the objective functions, modeling approaches and mathematics used in the three areas; examination of opportunities for "technology transfers" and for future interactions among researchers in the three areaso These goals were pursued through individual presentations of papers on current research by workshop participants and, in the cases of the second and third goals, through a number of open-ended discussion and-review sessions which were interspersed throughout the workshop's programmeD The full texts or extended summaries of all but a few of the papers given at the workshop are included in this volume.

Congestion Control in Data Transmission Networks details the modeling and control of data traffic in communication networks. It shows how various networking phenomena can be represented in a consistent mathematical framework suitable for rigorous formal analysis. The monograph differentiates between fluid-flow continuous-time traffic models, discrete-time processes with constant sampling rates, and sampled-data systems with variable discretization periods. The authors address a number of difficult real-life problems, such as: optimal control of flows with disparate, time-varying delay; the existence of source and channel nonlinearities; the balancing of quality of service and fairness requirements; and the incorporation of variable rate allocation policies. Appropriate control mechanisms which can handle congestion and guarantee high throughput in various traffic scenarios (with different networking phenomena being considered) are proposed. Systematic design procedures using sound control-theoretic foundations are adopted. Since robustness issues are of major concern in providing efficient data-flow regulation in today’s networks, sliding-mode control is selected as the principal technique to be applied in creating the control solutions. The controller derivation is given extensive analytical treatment and is supported with numerous realistic simulations. A comparison with existing solutions is also provided. The concepts applied are discussed in a number of illustrative examples, and supported by many figures, tables, and graphs walking the reader through the ideas and introducing their relevance in real networks. Academic researchers and graduate students working in computer networks and telecommunications and in control (especially time-delay systems and discrete-time optimal and sliding-mode control) will find this text a valuable assistance in ensuring smooth data-flow within communications networks.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International IFIP-TC6 Networking Conference, NETWORKING 2009, held in Aachen, Germany, in May 2000. The 48 revised full papers and 28 work-in-progress papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 232 submissions for inclusion in the book. The papers are organized in topical sections on Ad-Hoc Networks: Sensor Networks; Modelling: Routing & Queuing; Peer to peer: Analysis; Quality of Service: New Protocols; Wireless Networks: Planning & Performance; Applications and Services: System Evaluation; Peer to peer: Topology; Next Generation Internet: Transport Protocols; Wireless Networks: Protocols; Next Generation Internet: Network & Transport; Modelling and Performance Analysis: Infrastructure; Applications and Services: Streaming & Multimedia; Wireless Networks: Availability; Modelling and Performance Evaluation: Network Architectures; Peer to peer: Frameworks & Architectures; All-IP Networking: Frameworks; Next Generation Internet; Performance and Wireless.

As the number of processor cores and IP blocks integrated on a single chip is steadily growing, a systematic approach to design the communication infrastructure becomes necessary. Different variants of packed switched on-chip networks have been proposed by several groups during the past two years. This book summarizes the state of the art of these efforts and discusses the major issues from the physical integration to architecture to operating systems and application interfaces. It also provides a guideline and vision about the direction this field is moving to. Moreover, the book outlines the consequences of adopting design platforms based on packet switched network. The consequences may in fact be far reaching because many of the topics of distributed systems, distributed real-time systems, fault tolerant systems, parallel computer architecture, parallel programming as well as traditional system-on-chip issues will appear relevant but within the constraints of a single chip VLSI implementation.