The switching net.work is an important. classic research area in t.ele- communication and comput.er net.works. It.s import.ancc st.ems from both theory and practice. In fact, some open problems, such as Benes conjec- ture on shuffle-exchange networks and Chung-Rmis conjecture on multi- rate rearrangeability, still attract many researchers and the further de- velopment in optical networks requires advanced technology in optical switching networks. In 1997, we had a workshop in switching networks held in NSF Sci- ence and Technology Center in Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS), at Princeton University. This workshop was very successful. Many participants wished to have a similar activity every two or three years. This book is a result of such a wish. We are putting together SOllle important developments in this area during last. several years, including articles ill fault-tolerance, rearrang{~ability. non- blocking, optical networks. random permutation generat.ioll. and layout complexity. SOlllC of thos(~ art ides are research papers alld SOIllC an' sur- veys. All articles were reviewed. We would like to uWlItioll two special problems studied in those articles.

The switching net.work is an important. classic research area in t.ele- communication and comput.er net.works. It.s import.ancc st.ems from both theory and practice. In fact, some open problems, such as Benes conjec- ture on shuffle-exchange networks and Chung-Rmis conjecture on multi- rate rearrangeability, still attract many researchers and the further de- velopment in optical networks requires advanced technology in optical switching networks. In 1997, we had a workshop in switching networks held in NSF Sci- ence and Technology Center in Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS), at Princeton University. This workshop was very successful. Many participants wished to have a similar activity every two or three years. This book is a result of such a wish. We are putting together SOllle important developments in this area during last. several years, including articles ill fault-tolerance, rearrang{~ability. non- blocking, optical networks. random permutation generat.ioll. and layout complexity. SOlllC of thos(~ art ides are research papers alld SOIllC an' sur- veys. All articles were reviewed. We would like to uWlItioll two special problems studied in those articles.

The papers in this volume were selected for presentation at the 15th Annual InternationalComputing and CombinatoricsConference (COCOON 2009), held during July 13-15, 2009 in Niagara Falls, New York, USA. Previous meetings of this conference were held in Xian (1995), Hong Kong (1996), Shanghai (1997), Taipei(1998), Tokyo(1999), Sydney(2000), Guilin(2001), Singapore(2002), Big Sky (2003), Jeju Island (2004), Kunming (2005), Taipei (2006), Alberta (2007), and Dalian (2008). In response to the Call for Papers, 125 extended abstracts (not counting withdrawn papers) were submitted from 28 countries and regions, of which 51 were accepted. Authors of the submitted papers were from Cyprus (1), The Netherlands (1), Bulgaria (1), Israel (1), Vietnam (2), Finland (1), Puerto Rico (2), Australia (4), Norway (4), Portugal (1) Spain (2), France (16), Republic of Korea(3), Singapore(2), Italy(6), Iran, (4), Greece(7), Poland(4), Switzerland (8), Hong Kong (10), UK (12), India (7), Taiwan (18), Canada (23), China (19), Japan (39), Germany (44), and the USA (77). The submitted papers were evaluated by an international Technical P- gram Committee (TPC) consisting of Srinivas Aluru (Iowa State University, USA), Lars Arge (University of Aarhus, Denmark), Vikraman Arvind (Ins- tute of Mathematical Sciences, India), James Aspnes (Yale University, USA), Mikhail Atallah (Purdue University, USA), Gill Barequet (Technion - Israel - stitute of Technology, Israel), Michael Brudno (University of Toronto, Canada), Jianer Chen (Texas A&M, USA), Bhaskar DasGupta (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA), Anupam Gupta (Carnegie Mellon University, USA), L