This book aims to explain the basics of graph theory that are needed at an introductory level for students in computer or information sciences. To motivate students and to show that even these basic notions can be extremely useful, the book also aims to provide an introduction to the modern field of network science. Mathematics is often unnecessarily difficult for students, at times even intimidating. For this reason, explicit attention is paid in the first chapters to mathematical notations and proof techniques, emphasizing that the notations form the biggest obstacle, not the mathematical concepts themselves. This approach allows to gradually prepare students for using tools that are necessary to put graph theory to work: complex networks. In the second part of the book the student learns about random networks, small worlds, the structure of the Internet and the Web, peer-to-peer systems, and social networks. Again, everything is discussed at an elementary level, but such that in the end students indeed have the feeling that they: 1.Have learned how to read and understand the basic mathematics related to graph theory. 2.Understand how basic graph theory can be applied to optimization problems such as routing in communication networks. 3.Know a bit more about this sometimes mystical field of small worlds and random networks. There is an accompanying web site www.distributed-systems.net/gtcn from where supplementary material can be obtained, including exercises, Mathematica notebooks, data for analyzing graphs, and generators for various complex networks.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the ACM/IFIP/USENIX 7th International Middleware Conference 2006, held in Melbourne, Australia, in November/December 2006. The 21 revised full papers are organized in topical sections on performance, composition, management, publish/subscribe technology, databases, mobile and ubiquitous computing, security, and data mining techniques.

Information systems can be complex due to numerous factors including scale, decentralization, heterogeneity, mobility, dynamism, bugs and failures. Depl- ing, operating and maintaining such systems can be not only very di?cult, but also very costly. A ?urry of recent activity has been directed at this pr- lem, and future information systems are envisioned as self-con?guring, se- organizing, self-managingandself-repairing.Collectively, wecalltheseproperties self- properties. This book is a "spin-o?" of a by-invitation-only Bertinoro workshop on se- propertiesincomplexsystemswhichwasheldinsummer2004inBertinoro, Italy. The Self-star workshop brought together researchers and practitioners from d- ferent disciplines and with di?erent backgrounds to discuss complex information systems.Thethemeoftheworkshopwastoidentifytheconceptualandpractical foundationsformodeling, analyzingandachievingself- propertiesindistributed and networked systems. Partly based on these discussions, we solicited papers from the workshop participants and a set of invitees for this book. We sought original contributions in which authors explicitly take a position concerningrequirements, usefulness, potentialandlimitations oftechnologies for self- properties of complex systems. This position needed to be founded on - search results that were put clearly in context with respect to the position sta- ment. We strongly encouraged visionary statements, thought-provoking ideas, and exploratory results that will help the reader form her or his own opinions on the importance of self- properties in current and future complex information systems.

Since the start of the International Workshop on Web Caching and Content Distribution (WCW) in 1996, it has served as the premiere meeting for researchers and practitioners to exchange results and visions on all aspects of content caching, distribution, and delivery. Building on the success of the previous WCW meetings, WCW 2004 extended its scope and covered interesting research and deployment areas relating to content services as they move through the Internet. This year, WCW was held in Beijing, China. Although it was the first time that WCW was held in Asia, we received more than 50 high quality papers from five continents. Fifteen papers were accepted as regular papers and 6 papers as synopses to appear in the proceedings. The topics covered included architectural issues, routing and placement, caching in both traditional content delivery networks as well as in peer-- peer systems, systems management and deployment, and performance evaluation. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who submitted papers to WCW 2004 for their valued contribution to the workshop. This event would not have been possible without the broad and personal support and the invaluable suggestions and contributions of the members of the program committee and the steering committee.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2013, held in Nice, France, in December 2013. The 19 papers presented together with two invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 41 submissions. The conference is an international forum for the exchange of state-of-the-art knowledge on distributed computing and systems. Papers were sought soliciting original research contributions to the theory, specification, design and implementation of distributed systems.