This was the first conference jointly organized by the IFIP Working Groups 6. 2, 6. 3, and 6. 4. Each of these three Working Groups has its own established series of conferences. Working Group 6. 2 sponsors the Broadband Communications series of conferences (Paris 1995, Montreal 1996, Lisboa 1997, Stuttgart 1998, and Hong-Kong 1999). Working Group 6. 3 sponsors the Performance of Communication Systems series of conferences (Paris 1981, Zürich 1984, Rio de Janeiro 1987, Barcelona 1990, Raleigh 1993, Istanbul 1995, and Lund 1998). Working Group 6. 4 sponsors the High Performance Networking series of conferences (Aaren 1987, Liège 1988, Berlin 1990, Liège 1992, Grenoble 1994, Palma 1995, New York 1997, Vienna 1998). It is expected that this new joint conference will take place every two years. In view of the three sponsoring Working Groups, there were three separate tracks, one per Working Group. Each track was handled by a different co chairman. Specifically, the track of Working Group 6. 2 was handled by Ulf Körner, the track of Working Group 6. 3 was handled by Ioanis Stavrakakis, and the track of Working Group 6. 4 was handled by Serge Fdida. The overall program committee chairman was Harry Perros, and the general conference chairman was Guy Pujolle. A total of 209 papers were submitted to the conference of which 82 were accepted. Each paper was submitted to one of the three tracks.

This book contains the proceedings of the Second International Network Conference (INC 2000), which was held in Plymouth, UK, in July 2000. A total of 41 papers were accepted for inclusion in the conference, and they are presented here in 6 themed chapters. The main topics of the book include: Internet and WWW Technologies and Applications; Network Technologies and Management; Multimedia Integration; Distributed Technologies; Security and Privacy; and Social and Cultural Issues. The papers address state-of-the-art research and applications of network technology, arising from both the academic and industrial domains. The book should consequently be of interest to network practitioners, researchers, academics, and technical managers involved in the design, development and use of network systems.

Recent advances in mobile and wireless communication and personal computer technology have created a new paradigm for information processing. Today, mobile and wireless communications exit in many forms, providing different types of services. Existing forms of mobile and wireless communications continue to experience rapid growth and new applications and approaches are being spawned at an increasing rate. Recently, the mobile and wireless Internet has become one of the most important issues in the telecommunications arena. The development of the mobile and wireless Internet is the evolution of several different technologies coming together to make the Internet more accessible. Technologies such as the Internet, wireless networks, and mobile computing have merged to form the mobile and wireless Internet. The mobile and wireless Internet extends traditional Internet and World Wide Web services to wireless devices such as cellular phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and notebooks. Mobile and wireless Internet c:an give users access to personalized information anytime and anywhere they need it, and thus empower them to make decisions more quickly, and bring them closer to friends, family, and work colleagues. Wireless data communication methods have been around for sometime.

This book provides a comprehensive yet easy coverage of ad hoc and sensor networks and fills the gap of existing literature in this growing field. It emphasizes that there is a major interdependence among various layers of the network protocol stack. Contrary to wired or even one-hop cellular networks, the lack of a fixed infrastructure, the inherent mobility, the wireless channel, and the underlying routing mechanism by ad hoc and sensor networks introduce a number of technological challenges that are difficult to address within the boundaries of a single protocol layer.All existing textbooks on the subject often focus on a specific aspect of the technology, and fail to provide critical insights on cross-layer interdependencies. To fully understand these intriguing networks, one need to grasp specific solutions individually, and also the many interdependencies and cross-layer interactions.