Cross-Media Service Delivery is of interest to professionals and academicians working in content authoring and electronic publishing platforms; as well as in media and broadcasting.
The digitization of traditional media formats, such as text, images, video, and sound provides us with the ability to store, process, and transport content in a uniform way. This has led the formerly distinct industries of media, telecommunications, and information technology to converge. Cross-media publishing and service delivery are important new trends emerging in the content industry landscape. Mass-media organizations and content providers transitionally targeted content production towards a single delivery channel. However, recent economic and technological changes in the industry led content providers to extend their brands to cover multiple delivery channels. Following the content industry trend to "create once and publish everywhere" - COPE, a number of architectures, technologies, and tools are currently being developed and deployed to facilitate the automatic conversion of content to multiple formats, and the creation of innovative multi-platform services. This new approach enables the seamless access to information over different network infrastructures and client platforms.
This work uniquely brings together a cross-disciplinary core of contributors to address the technical and business issues of cross-media publishing and service delivery. The contributions are organized into four different areas: the business issues driving the requirements for cross media content delivery, the architectures used for delivering content to multiple platforms, technologies that address specificpractical problems, and, last but not least, concrete applications.

The companies that provide the Internet to the rest of the world do not have the luxury of setting high expectations and assuming they will be met. These Internet infrastructure companies (IICs) are responsible for delivering the Internet's promise, including everything from eBusiness and mobile Internet applications to optical services and high-speed access. The Internet's audience takes this promise for granted, and IICs face the daunting challenge of making the Internet, and networks like it, do what the audience expects them to. To meet the expectations they face, IICs must harness the power of their operations support systems (OSSs) - the software systems in the background they use to create, manage, maintain, manipulate and adapt their networks to serve customers reliably and rapidly.
Broadband Infrastructure: The Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Delivering OSS/BSS is a "how to" book for Internet infrastructure companies to help them prepare for the decisions they will face when constructing their core OSS strategies and infrastructure. This book provides a source of reference and education to learn the language, methods, and technologies associated with the OSS market. It examines the Internet infrastructure supply chain and how it will be automated. Finally, it brings together a wealth of proven knowledge and advice, gathered from BusinessEdge Solutions' extensive OSS experience, that broadband providers can use to minimize their OSS risks while maximizing their ability to differentiate and compete.

This guide provides a comprehensive overview of High Performance Computing (HPC) to equip students with a full skill set including cluster setup, network selection, and a background of supercomputing competitions. It covers the system, architecture, evaluating approaches, and other practical supercomputing techniques. As the world's largest supercomputing hackathon, the ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge has attracted a growing number of new talent to supercomputing and has greatly promoted communications in the global HPC community. Enclosed in this book, readers will also find how to analyze and optimize supercomputing systems and applications in real science and engineering cases.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the Fourth Annual Mediterranean Ad Hoc Networking Workshop, Med-Hoc-Net 2005. Med-Hoc-Net 2005 consolidated the success of the previous editions of the workshop series. It aimed to serve as a platform for researchers from academia, research, laboratories, and industry from all over the world to share their ideas, views, reults, and experiences in the field of ad-hoc networking.

Naming is an integral building block within data networks and systems and is becoming ever more important as complex data-centric usage models emerge. Internet Naming and Discovery is timely in developing a unified model for studying the topic of naming and discovery. It details the architectural and economic tools needed for designing naming and discovery schemes within the broader context of internetwork architecture. Readers will find in this book a historic overview of the Internet and a comprehensive survey of the literature, followed by and an in-depth examination of naming and discovery. Specific topics covered include: * formal definitions of name, address, identifier, locator, binding, routing, discovery, mapping, and resolution; * a discussion of the properties of names and bindings, along with illustrative case studies; * taxonomy that helps in organizing the solution space, and more importantly in identifying new avenues for contributing to the field; * a general model for exploring the tradeoffs involved in designing discovery systems; * an illustrative design exercise for differentiated discovery services; * broad treatment of the main economic issues that arise in the context of discovery; and * a game-theoretic incentive model for route distribution (and discovery) in the context of path-vector routing protocols (mainly BGP). Internet Naming and Discovery will be of great value to readers, including graduate students, engineers and computer scientists, theoreticians and practitioners, seeking a training in advanced networking, or specializing in computer and communications networks.

Under Quality of Service (QoS) routing, paths for flows are selected based upon the knowledge of resource availability at network nodes and the QoS requirements of flows. QoS routing schemes proposed differ in the way they gather information about the network state and select paths based on this information. We broadly categorize these schemes into best-path routing and proportional routing. The best-path routing schemes gather global network state information and always select the best path for an incoming flow based on this global view. On the other hand, proportional routing schemes proportion incoming flows among a set of candidate paths. We have shown that it is possible to compute near-optimal proportions using only locally collected information. Furthermore, a few good candidate paths can be selected using infrequently exchanged global information and thus with minimal communication overhead.

Localized Quality Of Service Routing For The Internet, describes these schemes in detail demonstrating that proportional routing schemes can achieve higher throughput with lower overhead than best-path routing schemes. It first addresses the issue of finding near-optimal proportions for a given set of candidate paths based on locally collected flow statistics. This book will also look into the selection of a few good candidate paths based on infrequently exchanged global information. The final phase of this book will describe extensions to proportional routing approach to provide hierarchical routing across multiple areas in a large network.

Localized Quality Of Service Routing For The Internet is designed for researchers and practitioners in industry, and is suitable for graduatelevel students in computer science as a secondary text.

Quantum Communication, Quantum Networks, and Quantum Sensing represents a self-contained introduction to quantum communication, quantum error-correction, quantum networks, and quantum sensing. It starts with basic concepts from classical detection theory, information theory, and channel coding fundamentals before continuing with basic principles of quantum mechanics including state vectors, operators, density operators, measurements, and dynamics of a quantum system. It continues with fundamental principles of quantum information processing, basic quantum gates, no-cloning and theorem on indistinguishability of arbitrary quantum states. The book then focuses on quantum information theory, quantum detection and Gaussian quantum information theories, and quantum key distribution (QKD). The book then covers quantum error correction codes (QECCs) before introducing quantum networks. The book concludes with quantum sensing and quantum radars, quantum machine learning and fault-tolerant quantum error correction concepts.

Data Communications and Networking, 6th Edition, teaches the principles of networking using TCP/IP protocol suite. It employs a bottom-up approach where each layer in the TCP/IP protocol suite is built on the services provided by the layer below. This edition has undergone a major restructuring to reduce the number of chapters and focus on the organization of TCP/IP protocol suite. It concludes with three chapters that explore multimedia, network management, and cryptography/network security. Technologies related to data communications and networking are among the fastest growing in our culture today, and there is no better guide to this rapidly expanding field than Data Communications and Networking.

Piecewise Linear (PL) approximation of non-linear behaviour is a well-known technique in synthesis and analysis of electrical networks. However, the PL description should be efficient in data storage and the description should allow simple retrieval of the stored information. Furthermore, it would be useful if the model description could handle a large class of piecewise linear mappings. Piecewise Linear Modeling and Analysis explains in detail all possible model descriptions for efficiently storing piecewise linear functions, starting with the Chua descriptions. Detailed explanation on how the model parameter can be obtained for a given mapping is provided and demonstrated by examples. The models are ranked to compare them and to show which model can handle the largest class of PL mappings. All model descriptions are implicitly related to the Linear Complementarity Problem and most solution techniques for this problem, like Katzenelson and Lemke, are discussed according to examples that are explained in detail. To analyse PL electrical networks a simulator is mandatory. Piecewise Linear Modeling and Analysis provides a detailed outline of a possible PL simulator, including pseudo-programming code. Several simulation domains like transient, AC and distortion are discussed. The book explains the attractive features of PL simulators with respect to mixed-level and mixed-signal simulation while paying due regard also to hierarchical simulation. Piecewise Linear Modeling and Analysis shows in detail how many existing components in electrical networks can be modeled. These range from digital logic and analog basic elements such as transistors to complex systems like Phase-Locked Loops and detection systems. Simulation results are also provided. The book concludes with a discussion on how to find multiple solutions for PL functions or networks. Again, the most common techniques are outlined using clear examples. Piecewise Linear Modeling and Analysis is an indispensable guide for researchers and designers interested in network theory, network synthesis and network analysis.

The ongoing migration of computing and information access from stationary environments to mobile computing devices for eventual use in mobile environments, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), tablet PCs, next generation mobile phones, and in-car driver assistance systems, poses critical challenges for natural human-computer interaction. Spoken dialogue is a key factor in ensuring natural and user-friendly interaction with such devices which are meant not only for computer specialists, but also for everyday users.

Speech supports hands-free and eyes-free operation, and becomes a key alternative interaction mode in mobile environments, e.g. in cars where driver distraction by manually operated devices may be a significant problem. On the other hand, the use of mobile devices in public places, may make the possibility of using alternative modalities possibly in combination with speech, such as graphics output and gesture input, preferable due to e.g. privacy issues. Researchers' interest is progressively turning to the integration of speech with other modalities such as gesture input and graphics output, partly to accommodate more efficient interaction and partly to accommodate different user preferences.

This book:
-combines overview chapters of key areas in spoken multimodal dialogue (systems and components, architectures, and evaluation) with chapters focussed on particular applications or problems in the field;
-focuses on the influence of the environment when building and evaluating an application.

Audience: Computer scientists, engineers, and others who work in the area of spoken multimodal dialogue systems in academia and in the industry;
graduatestudents and Ph.D. students specialising in spoken multimodal dialogue systems in general, or focusing on issues in these systems in mobile environments in particular.

The evolution of modern computers began more than 50 years ago and has been driven to a large extend by rapid advances in electronic technology during that period. The first computers ran one application (user) at a time. Without the benefit of operating systems or compilers, the application programmers were responsible for managing all aspects of the hardware. The introduction of compilers allowed programmers to express algorithms in abstract terms without being concerned with the bit level details of their implementation. Time sharing operating systems took computing systems one step further and allowed several users and/or applications to time share the computing services of com puters. With the advances of networks and software tools, users and applications were able to time share the logical and physical services that are geographically dispersed across one or more networks. Virtual Computing (VC) concept aims at providing ubiquitous open computing services in analogous way to the services offered by Telephone and Elec trical (utility) companies. The VC environment should be dynamically setup to meet the requirements of a single user and/or application. The design and development of a dynamically programmable virtual comput ing environments is a challenging research problem. However, the recent advances in processing and network technology and software tools have successfully solved many of the obstacles facing the wide deployment of virtual computing environments as will be outlined next."

As more and more of our data is stored remotely, accessing that data wherever and whenever it is needed is a critical concern. More concerning is managing the databanks and storage space necessary to enable cloud systems. Resource Management of Mobile Cloud Computing Networks and Environments reports on the latest advances in the development of computationally intensive and cloud-based applications. Covering a wide range of problems, solutions, and perspectives, this book is a scholarly resource for specialists and end-users alike making use of the latest cloud technologies.

This book covers performance analysis of computer networks, and begins by providing the necessary background in probability theory, random variables, and stochastic processes. Queuing theory and simulation are introduced as the major tools analysts have access to. It presents performance analysis on local, metropolitan, and wide area networks, as well as on wireless networks. It concludes with a brief introduction to self-similarity. Designed for a one-semester course for senior-year undergraduates and graduate engineering students, it may also serve as a fingertip reference for engineers developing communication networks, managers involved in systems planning, and researchers and instructors of computer communication networks.

In October 2000, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology selected the block cipher Rijndael as the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES is expected to gradually replace the present Data Encryption Standard (DES) as the most widely applied data encryption technology. This book by the designers of the block cipher presents Rijndael from scratch. The underlying mathematics and the wide trail strategy as the basic design idea are explained in detail and the basics of differential and linear cryptanalysis are reworked. Subsequent chapters review all known attacks against the Rijndael structure and deal with implementation and optimization issues. Finally, other ciphers related to Rijndael are presented. This book is THE authoritative guide to the Rijndael algorithm and AES. Professionals, researchers, and students active or interested in data encryption will find it a valuable source of information and reference.

The terms groupware and CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work) have received significant attention in computer science and related disciplines for quite some time now. This book has two main objectives: first, to outline the meaning of both terms, and second, to point out both the numerous opportunities for users of CSCW systems and the risks of applying them. The book introduces in detail an interdisciplinary application area of distributed systems, namely the computer support of individuals trying to solve a problem in cooperation with each other but not necessarily having identical work places or working times. CSCW can be viewed as a synergism between the areas of distributed systems and (multimedia) communications on the one hand and those of information science and socio-organizational theory on the other hand. Thus, the book is addressed to students of all these disciplines, as well as to users and developers of systems with group communication and cooperation as top priorities.

Metropolitan Area WDM Networks: An AWG Based Approach provides a comprehensive and technically detailed overview of the latest metropolitan area WDM network experimental systems, architectures, and access protocols. Its main focus is on the novel star WDM networks based on a wavelength-selective Arrayed-Waveguide Grating (AWG). Network researchers, engineers, professionals, and graduate students will benefit from the thorough overview and gain an in-depth understanding of current and next-generation metro WDM networks.

The AWG based metro star WDM network is discussed at length and extensively investigated by means of stochastic analyses and simulations. The book provides:
*an up-to-date overview of ring and star metro WDM networks and access protocols,
*in-depth performance comparison studies of AWG based multihop vs. single-hop WDM networks and AWG vs. Passive Star Coupler based single-hop WDM networks,
*a thorough description of the AWG based network and node architectures and access protocols,
*a novel highly-efficient approach to provide survivability for star WDM networks,
*extensive analytical results for both unicast and multicast variable-size packet traffic and bandwidth on demand,
*supplementary simulation results, including packet header trace files.

Security is the science and technology of secure communications and resource protection from security violation such as unauthorized access and modification. Putting proper security in place gives us many advantages. It lets us exchange confidential information and keep it confidential. We can be sure that a piece of information received has not been changed. Nobody can deny sending or receiving a piece of information. We can control which piece of information can be accessed, and by whom. We can know when a piece of information was accessed, and by whom. Networks and databases are guarded against unauthorized access. We have seen the rapid development of the Internet and also increasing security requirements in information networks, databases, systems, and other information resources. This comprehensive book responds to increasing security needs in the marketplace, and covers networking security and standards. There are three types of readers who are interested in security: non-technical readers, general technical readers who do not implement security, and technical readers who actually implement security. This book serves all three by providing a comprehensive explanation of fundamental issues of networking security, concept and principle of security standards, and a description of some emerging security technologies. The approach is to answer the following questions: 1. What are common security problems and how can we address them? 2. What are the algorithms, standards, and technologies that can solve common security problems? 3.

This book provides a timely overview of the impacts of digitalization from the perspective of everyday life, and argues that one central issue in digitalization is the development of new types of services that digitalization enables, but which are often overlooked due to the focus on new technologies and devices. The book summarizes the past 20 years of research into the relationship between information and communications technology (ICT) and service innovation, and reveals that the ongoing digitalization is a qualitatively different phenomenon and represents a true paradigm shift. The all-encompassing integration and distribution of data raises critical issues such as preserving human dignity and individual autonomy; moreover, interaction practices that foster broad participation, trust, learning, and a willingness to share knowledge are called for. Citizen empowerment and multi-actor co-creation have become central to using digitalization to support the development of wellbeing and sustainability. Further, the book shows how employees and professionals can and should be involved in designing their future work, and in evaluating it. Proactiveness and participation in innovation endeavours are ways to guarantee meaningful work in an age of socio-technical transition. The book employs a variety of theoretical approaches and perspectives from diverse disciplines to illustrate these needs. In addition to theoretical analyses, some specific application areas are examined, e.g. services in health and social care, and problems linked to robots in elderly care. Given its scope, the book is highly recommended to all readers seeking an overview of the current understanding of the human side of digitalization and searching for concrete cases from different countries to illustrate the topic.

Introduction: Background and Status. Design before Evaluation. Prerequisite Knowledge Areas: Supportive Tools and Techniques. Interface Structures. Basic Measures. Measurement and Evaluation: Evaluation Terms and Aspects. Tailored Measures of Performance. Evaluation Approaches and Methods. Special Topics: Stress and User Satisfaction. Visualizable Objects and Spaces. Interaction and Mental Involvement. Structural Specification and Utility. Index.

Collaborative Networks is a fast developing area, as shown by the already large number of diverse real-world implemented cases and the dynamism of its related involved research community. Benefiting from contributions of multiple areas, nameley management, economy, social sciences, law and ethics, etc., the area of Collaborative Networs is being consolidated as a new scientific discipline of its own. On one hand significant steps towards a stronger theoretical foundation for this new discipline are developed and applied in industry and services.

Based on the experiences and lessons learned in many research projects and pilot cases developed during the last decade, a new emphasis is now being put on the development of holistic frameworks, combining business models, conceptual models, governance principles and methods, as well as supporting infrastructures and services. In fact, researching the phase in which the computer and networking technologies provide a good starting basis for the establishment of collaborative platforms, the emphasis is now turning to the understanding of the collaboration promotion mechanisms and CN governance principles. Therefore, issues such as the value systems, trust, performance and benefits distribution are gaining more importance. Encompassing all these developments, the efforts to develp reference models for collaborative networks represent a major challenge in order to provide the foundation for further developments of the CN.

PRO-VE represents a good synthesis of the work in this area, and plays an active role in the promotion of these activities. Being recognized as the most focused scientific and technical conference on CollaborativeNetworks, PRO-VE continues to offer the opportunity for presentation and discussion of both the latest research developments as well as the practical application case studies. Following the vision of IFIP and SOCOLNET, the PRO-VE conference offers a forum for collaboration and knowledge exchange among experts from different regions of the world.

Lo, soul! seest thou not God's purpose from the first? The earth to be spann'd, connected by net-work From Passage to India! Walt Whitman, "Leaves of Grass", 1900. The Internet is growing at a tremendous rate today. New services, such as telephony and multimedia, are being added to the pure data-delivery framework of yesterday. Such high demands on capacity could lead to a "bandwidth-crunch" at the core wide-area network resulting in degra dation of service quality. Fortunately, technological innovations have emerged which can provide relief to the end-user to overcome the In ternet's well-known delay and bandwidth limitations. At the physical layer, a major overhaul of existing networks has been envisaged from electronic media (such as twisted-pair and cable) to optical fibers - in the wide area, in the metropolitan area, and even in the local area set tings. In order to exploit the immense bandwidth potential of the optical fiber, interesting multiplexing techniques have been developed over the years. Wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) is such a promising tech nique in which multiple channels are operated along a single fiber si multaneously, each on a different wavelength. These channels can be independently modulated to accommodate dissimilar bit rates and data formats, if so desired. Thus, WDM carves up the huge bandwidth of an optical fiber into channels whose bandwidths (1-10 Gbps) are compati ble with peak electronic processing speed.

This book provides an original graph theoretical approach to the fundamental properties of wireless mobile ad-hoc networks. This approach is combined with a realistic radio model for physical links between nodes to produce new insight into network characteristics like connectivity, degree distribution, hopcount, interference and capacity. The book establishes directives for designing ad-hoc networks and sensor networks. It will interest the academic community, and engineers who roll out ad-hoc and sensor networks.

This year, the IFIP Working Conference on Distributed and Parallel Embedded Sys tems (DIPES 2008) is held as part of the IFIP World Computer Congress, held in Milan on September 7 10, 2008. The embedded systems world has a great deal of experience with parallel and distributed computing. Many embedded computing systems require the high performance that can be delivered by parallel computing. Parallel and distributed computing are often the only ways to deliver adequate real time performance at low power levels. This year's conference attracted 30 submissions, of which 21 were accepted. Prof. Jor ] g Henkel of the University of Karlsruhe graciously contributed a keynote address on embedded computing and reliability. We would like to thank all of the program committee members for their diligence. Wayne Wolf, Bernd Kleinjohann, and Lisa Kleinjohann Acknowledgements We would like to thank all people involved in the organization of the IFIP World Computer Congress 2008, especially the IPC Co Chairs Judith Bishop and Ivo De Lotto, the Organization Chair Giulio Occhini, as well as the Publications Chair John Impagliazzo. Further thanks go to the authors for their valuable contributions to DIPES 2008. Last but not least we would like to acknowledge the considerable amount of work and enthusiasm spent by our colleague Claudius Stern in preparing theproceedingsofDIPES2008. Hemadeitpossibletoproducethemintheircurrent professional and homogeneous style."

With rapid increase of mobile users of laptop computers and cellular phones, support of Internet services like e-mail and World Wide Web (WWW) access in a mobile environment is an indispensable requirement. The wireless networks must have the ability to provide real-time bursty traffic (such as voice or video) and data traffic in a multimedia environment with high quality of service. To satisfy the huge demand for wireless multimedia service, efficient channel access methods must be devised. For design and tuning of the channel access methods, the system performance must be mathematically analysed. To do so, very accurate models, that faithfully reproduce the stochastic behaviour of multimedia wireless communication and computer networks, must be constructed.
There exist several books on the performance analysis and evaluation for data communication networks or computer networks. This book attempts to present exact and approximate analytical solution methods and techniques using queueing theory in the complex multimedia traffic systems with procedures of random multiple access schemes. In particular, this book presents how to approximate the system performance of discrete-time multimedia networks, the probability distribution of the interarrival time of internetwork packets at the adjacent network and the higher moments of the transmission departure distribution and delay in wireless multimedia communication environment. In general the modeling of discrete-time multimedia communication systems are more complex than that of continuous-time systems because multiple state changes can occur from one time-unit to the next. This complicates the analysis of the model. This book alsodiscusses numerical results that illustrate the applications of the theory and various properties.
Performance Analysis of Multichannel and Multi-Traffic on Wireless Communication Networks should prove useful to a post-graduate course in computer science or electrical engineering. It can be a pre requisite to some other more advanced courses like network design and management or queueing theory with applications to multimedia communication and computer networks. It can also be used for a course on stochastic models in applied mathematics and operations research departments.