During the last two decades we have seen a tremendous development within the computer and communication industry. The ever increasing density on silicon, the increasing transmission speeds on fiber based systems as well as twisted pairs, the revolutionary development in the wireless area and of course the Internet have all led to many opportunities for new service developments. It is interesting to note that the last time this conference was held three years ago, the Web really did not fully exist. We are now ready to face new interesting challenges. It is an utmost importance for the performance community to focus on the modeling and analysis of the Internet, the multimedia applications and the untethered applications that are coming to the forefront. There will be a need for new and better simulation methods, new analytical tools and a much better understanding of measurement techniques. "Performance of Information and Communication Systems", PICS'98, which takes place in Lund, Sweden, May 25-28, 1998, is the seventh conference in a series on performance of communication systems organized by IFIP TC 6, WG 6.3. In response to our call for papers, we have received nearly fifty submissions.

There are many exciting trends and developments in the communications industry, several of which are related to advances in fast packet switching, multi media services, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and high-speed protocols. It seems fair to say that the face of networking has been rapidly changing and the distinction between LANs, MANs, and WANs is becoming more and more blurred. It is commonly believed in the industry that ATM represents the next generation in networking. The adoption of ATM standards by the research and development community as a unifying technology for communications that scales from local to wide area has been met with great enthusiasm from the business community and end users. Reflecting these trends, the technical program of the First International Conference on LAN Interconnection consists of papers addressing a wide range of technical challenges and state of the art reviews. We are fortunate to have assembled a strong program committee, expert speakers, and panelists. We would like to thank Professor Schwartz for his keynote speech. We would like to thank Professor Yannis Viniotis and his students for the preparation of the index. We gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support of Dr. Jon Fjeld, Mr. Rick McGee, and Mr. David Witt, all of IBM-Research Triangle Park. We also would like to thank Ms. Mary Safford, our editor, and Mr. John Matzka, both at Plenum Press, for the publication of the proceedings.

During the last two decades we have seen a tremendous development within the computer and communication industry. The ever increasing density on silicon, the increasing transmission speeds on fiber based systems as well as twisted pairs, the revolutionary development in the wireless area and of course the Internet have all led to many opportunities for new service developments. It is interesting to note that the last time this conference was held three years ago, the Web really did not fully exist. We are now ready to face new interesting challenges. It is an utmost importance for the performance community to focus on the modeling and analysis of the Internet, the multimedia applications and the untethered applications that are coming to the forefront. There will be a need for new and better simulation methods, new analytical tools and a much better understanding of measurement techniques. "Performance of Information and Communication Systems," PICS'98, which takes place in Lund, Sweden, May 25-28, 1998, is the seventh conference in a series on performance of communication systems organized by IFIP TC 6, WG 6.3. In response to our call for papers, we have received nearly fifty submissions.

QoS Enhancements and the New Transport Services; A. Danthine, et al. Performance Evaluation and Monitoring of Heterogenous Networks; J. Neuman, et al. Application of High Speed Networks in Hospital Environment; J.R. Rao. On Allocation Schemes for the Interconnection of LANs and Multimedia Sources over Broadband Networks; M. Mateescu. A Superposition of Bursty Sources in a LAN Interconnection Environment; J.M. Karlsson. Interconnecting LANs for Real Time Traffic Application; I. Chlamtac. An Analytical Model for ATM Based Networks which Utilize LookAhead Contention Resolution Switching; J.V. Luciani, C.Y. Roger Chen. Transient Analysis of Nonhomogenous Continuous Time Markov Chains Describing Realistic LAN Systems; A. Rindos, et al. Closed Queueing Network Modeling for End-to-End Performance Analysis of ISO LLC Transport Protocols over Bridged Networks; T. Ikegawa. A Preview of APPN High Performance Routing; J.P. Gray, M.L. Peters. 12 additional articles. Index.