Next-generation corporate networks

The Internet Protocol will bring together two disparate networks now vital to every business: the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and the Internet. Next generation enterprise networks (NGENs) must fulfill current expectations for corporate networks, plus also seamlessly support mobility and multimedia applications. And they must do this within flexible, often adaptive, self-configuring, and interoperable architectures. NGENs also must be user-friendly and scalable. They must support bandwidth and quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, in addition to delivering the expected reliability and availability. To meet these requirements, the trend is to consolidate disparate networks into one simple (IP only) high-capacity, reliable, scalable, QoS-aware network. NGENs will use one set of protocols (such as IPv4 or IPv6), processes, and vendors and one set of management, administration, and billing processes. They must be able to easily accommodate emerging technologies and services     

Integrated Mobility and QoS Control in Cellular Wireless ATM Networks

This paper presents a traversed pathtracking-based technique for integrated mobility andquality-of-service (QoS) management of connections incellular wireless ATM networks. Simulation andanalytical results for probabilities of connectionBlocking, Dropping, and Unsuccessful Connections aredetermined. A distributed operating system-basedarchitecture for implementation of integrated mobilityand QoS control is then proposed. The objective is totreat mobility as a network impairment triggeredactivity which is to be handled via QoS management.Depending on the speed of the mobile unit and thecategory of service being used, the QoS of a connectionmay or may not vary continuously during a session. Theresults presented here consider coexistence of constantbit-rate and nonreal-time variable bitrate ATM connections over a single session.     

Comments on “Mean internodal distance in regular and randommultihop networks”

Rose (see ibid. vol.40, no.8, p.1310-1318, 1992) has been stated that “in general, there is no analytical expression for the average distance between the nodes in the Manhattan street networks (MSNs).” The purpose of this comment is to bring the work of Khasnabish (1992, 1991, 1989) and Khasnabish, Ahmadi and Shridhar (1991, 1992) to the attention of the engineering community     

Mobile Cloud for Personalized Any-Media Services

In this paper,we define mobile cloud computing and describe how it can be used for delivering advanced any-media services to both nomadic and mobile users.We focus on service delivery that is localized and personalized and suggest that virtualization and tighter cross-layer communication allows for convergence and seamless transition of services.These are also creating new and never-before seen ways of developing and delivering personalized any-media services.We discuss current paradigms for implementing cloud-based any-media services that generate revenue.Future research topics and requirements for evolving network and service elements are also discussed.     

Applications and support technologies for mobility and enterprise services

For enterprises, large and small, mobile services are becoming increasingly critical. Companies are no longer static or bound to their office premises. Instead, they have full mobility needs, with global customers, many of them also on the move, a growing number of remote offices that need to be interconnected, telecommuters who work from home, employees that are always traveling, with longer times out of the office and in the field. The six articles in this special issue cover mobile convergent communications (IMS corporate services), mobile e-health/e-inclusion applications, networked workspaces, and mobile device collaborations.     

Trading nodal storage capacity with incremental transmissioncapacity

Queueing formulations are presented for trading nodal storage capacity (SC) with the incremental transmission capacity (TC) of links in supra-high-speed (i.e., >10⁸/bps) packet-switched communication networks. The performance criterion used is the mean nodal forwarding time. The results are useful for designing all-optical packet-switching telecommunication networks where the designer needs to compute the amount of incremental TC (ITC) needed to eliminate a specified number of nodal buffers (SC) while preserving the mean nodal forwarding time     

Traffic shaping, bandwidth allocation, and quality assessment forMPEG video distribution over broadband networks

This article provides an overview of residential video delivery systems and presents the applications, benefits, and challenges of using VBR MPEG video encoding in broadband video distribution networks. The network resources required to transmit stored variable-rate MPEG can be reduced by properly analyzing and smoothing the video stream before transmission. A scheduling technique is presented which selects a traffic contract for a pre-encoded MPEG video stream with the criteria of minimizing network resources and maintaining video quality. Several effective bandwidth metrics are discussed and used to model the potential savings in network resources for the shaped streams     

Broadband to the home (BTTH): architectures, access methods, andthe appetite for it

The demand for high-volume data transfer to the home for interactive multipurpose residential multimedia applications (such as tele-education, interactive on-demand entertainment, home shopping, browsing the World Wide Web to retrieve up-to-date information) and telecollaboration, including telecommuting to work, are continuously increasing. Technological advances and the 1996 Telecommunications (Deregulation) Act allow both telephone and television service providers to compete in each other's territory for providing broadband services to the home (BTTH). BTTH refers to broadband data services which may or may not use a high bandwidth link. It essentially gives the end user an impression or feeling that megabit-rate data transmission is occurring to/from the terminal, so the benefits of broadband services are enjoyed at the most convenient time within the comforts of home. It can be achieved for example, by using twisted pair copper wire telephone line using various types of digital subscriber line (xDSL) modems installed at both ends of the line. Issues and challenges of BTTH are discussed, in addition to describing future position(s) of the traditional service providers     

A Re-Engineering, Methodology for Cooperative Management of Enterprise Networks

With the increasing implementation by networkedmission-critical applications, an enterprise network isbecoming the lifeline of an organization. Massiveinvestments are being made in the modernization of enterprise networks of diverse serviceorganizations, such as telecommunications andhealth-care providers. Organizations need to adapt tochanging business environment, such as the deregulationof telecommunication services. This necessitates a seamlessintegration of business management processes withenterprise network management processes. Hence there isa need for the formulation of new methodologies for there-engineering of management solutions (with focus onintegrated business processes), though most present daysolutions concentrate on the management of networkequipment only. This paper presents a new methodologyfor the reengineering of the management processesfor enterprise networks, based on Computer SupportedCooperative Work (CSCW) techniques.