GERAD celebrates this year its 25th anniversary. The Center was created in 1980 by a small group of professors and researchers of HEC Montreal, McGill University and of the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal. GERAD's activities achieved sufficient scope to justify its conversion in June 1988 into a Joint Research Centre of HEC Montreal, the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and McGill University. In 1996, the U- versite du Quebec a Montreal joined these three institutions. GERAD has fifty members (professors), more than twenty research associates and post doctoral students and more than two hundreds master and Ph.D. students. GERAD is a multi-university center and a vital forum for the devel- ment of operations research. Its mission is defined around the following four complementarily objectives: • The original and expert contribution to all research fields in GERAD's area of expertise; • The dissemination of research results in the best scientific outlets as well as in the society in general; • The training of graduate students and post doctoral researchers; • The contribution to the economic community by solving important problems and providing transferable tools.

With ever-increasing demands on capacity, quality of service, speed, and reliability, current Internet systems are under strain and under review. Combining contributions from experts in the field, this book captures the most recent and innovative designs, architectures, protocols, and mechanisms that will enable researchers to successfully build the next-generation Internet. A broad perspective is provided, with topics including innovations at the physical/transmission layer in wired and wireless media, as well as the support for new switching and routing paradigms at the device and sub-system layer. The proposed alternatives to TCP and UDP at the data transport layer for emerging environments are also covered, as are the novel models and theoretical foundations proposed for understanding network complexity. Finally, new approaches for pricing and network economics are discussed, making this ideal for students, researchers, and practitioners who need to know about designing, constructing, and operating the next-generation Internet.

This handbook delivers a complete and practice-oriented overview of the fundamentals of today's telecommunications networks and the future prospects for next generation networks (NGN). The very clear and concise text is supplemented by many colour illustrations and embedded into a functional four-colour layout.