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In this article, the author talks about Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Green Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Topics discussed include its focus on cloud computing, smart cities, and transportation electrification; officials of IEEE Green ICT namely Harvey Freeman, Jaafar M. H. Elmirghani, and Charles Despins; and conference and workshops of the same.

Many university groups are actively working to apply their scientific results in business, but to be efficient and grounded they need industrial input on up-to-date trends and demands. FRUCT, a Finnish-Russian Association which has become a Sister Society of IEEE ComSoc, was designed as an open innovation framework targeted in developing partnership between industrial and academic research, help to find research partners and incubate new competences. FRUCT involves students and postgraduates in the research process and forms research work groups for solving high-tech problems in ICT. Also FRUCT enhances interest to science and builds convenient infrastructure for collaborative and effective execution of distributed research projects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Driven by increasing bandwidth demand from increasing broadband penetration, video, and other high-bandwidth services, the IEEE 802.3 Working Group has proposed a new project on higher speed Ethernet, chartered with development of standards for new interfaces with medium access control data rates of 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s. As the impact of this technology will not be confined to large data centers, this paper explores the overall network context for higher speed Ethernet and the related evolution of the optical transport network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-speed packet access (HSPA) was included in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) releases 5 and 6 for downlink and for uplink. The 3GPP release 7 offers a number of HSPA enhancements, providing major improvements to the end-user performance and to net- work efficiency. The release 7 features are introduced in this paper. Release 7 also is known as HSPA evolution or HSPA+. The HSPA+ downlink peak bit rate can be increased to 28.8 Mbps with a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna solution, and the uplink rate can be increased to 11.5 Mbps with higher order modulation in release 7. The higher peak rates are facilitated by the layer 2 optimization in downlink. In addition, the terminal power consumption can be reduced considerably for packet applications. The downlink cell capacity will be enhanced with new types of terminal requirements for a two-antenna equalizer and with MIMO. Altogether, release 7 features nearly double the cell capacity compared to release 6 with emphasis on the capacity of voice-over-IP (VoIP) service. 3GPP release 7 enables the simplification of the network architecture. The number of network elements for the user plane can be reduced from four in release 6 to two in release 7. The HSPA flat architecture in release 7 is similar to the architecture agreed upon for 3GPP long- term evolution (LTE), thus enabling the later, smooth evolution from HSPA to LTE. LTE will be specified as part of release 8 and further push the radio capabilities higher with larger bandwidth and lower latency. The LTE performance target is to provide two-to-four times the performance of the HSPA release 6 reference case [1]. 3GPP release 7 and 8 solutions for the HSPA evolution will be worked in parallel together with the LTE development, and some aspects of the LTE work are expected to reflect on the HSPA evolution as well. 3GPP release 7 was completed in June 2007, with some work remaining on the performance requirements. Commercial deployment and devices are expected by 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context refers to information characterizing the situation of an entity or a group of entities, and it provides information about the present status of the entities. The term context may be understood differently in different scenarios and for different involved users. The involved entities can be either concrete entities or virtual entities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents information about the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) which is working for the expansion of distance learning technologies, in Saudi Arabia. IPA was established in Riyadh in 1961. It is the country's leading government organization and it is responsible for the development of the nation's public sector. It has four main functions in the country's public sector: training, research, consultation, and archiving. Training is delivered to local government employees and high school graduates. The subjects includes accounting, public administration, marketing, English language, and computer science. In 2004 more than 18,000 students attended training and graduated from IPA. The IPA Research Center is mainly responsible for research funding and development, book publishing, and translation. The responsibility of the Consultation Department is to improve the performance of the government sector in several fields such as regulation, organization, and technology. In 1980, the Computer Center was established to support the growing need for IT. This unit is responsible for planning, developing, supporting, operating, securing, and maintaining IPA's whole computing infrastructure.

The article features the development of networking technologies in developing countries. Newer technological challenges and opportunities are brought by the emergence of economies in the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, South America, and eastern Europe, notably those of Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa. The challenge, however, lies in adapting the networking technologies available, and possibly creating new ones, to cater to the specific needs of emerging economies. It has been shown that there is a link between an increase in information and communications technology penetration and an increase in national gross domestic product (GDP), and could be an important means to eradicate poverty.

The article discusses the professional staffs of the Communications Society (ComSoc). It presents an organized presentation of staffs of the individual departments with comments from the department heads. The departments include marketing, advertising, executive and volunteer services, information technology (IT), finance and administration, publications, and meetings and conferences. The heads of the different departments are also provided which include John Pape of marketing, Eric Levine of advertising, and David Alvarez of IT.

The article discusses the role of connection-oriented networking for grid applications and the issues of optical burst switching in consumer grid network. Grid applications enables the researchers rely on the sharing capability of large compute platforms and data storage. On the other hand, scientific applications requires high bandwidth connectivity to support leadership class supercomputers as well as highly dynamic operation. The unique and challenging demands on the network infrastructure of grid applications were described.

The article presents information related to conferences and workshops, related to optical communications, to be held during the year 2004 and 2005. Workshop on high performance switching and routing will be held in April, 2004 in Phoenix, Arizona. A conference on student paper contest on the information security will be held in April 2004, Tomsk Russia. Communication theory workshop will be held in May 2004, in Capri, Italy. A symposium on circuits and systems will be held in May 2004, in Vancouver, Canada. Supercomm Inc. will be organizing an enterprising and service conference in June 2004, in Chicago, Illinois. A conference on information technology will be held in July 2004 In London England. Symposium on signal system, and electronics will be held in August 2004 in Linz, Australia. The symposium of Asia Pacific Optical Communications Intentional, will be held in November 2004, in Beijing, China. Optical fiber communications conference and exhibition will be organized in March 2005, in Anaheim, California.

The article focuses on the Beyond 3G (B3G) wireless systems which should deliver much higher data transmission rates and more diverse services than current 2-3G systems can. All-IP wireless architecture has emerged as the most preferred platform for B3G wireless communications. Therefore, the design of a future Wireless air interface has to take into account the fact that the dominant load in B3G wireless channels will be high-speed burst-type traffic. The necessity to support such high-capacity bursty traffic in extremely unpredictable wireless channels has already posed a great challenge to all existing air link technologies based on time-division multiple access or code-division multiple access (CDMA) alike. Many research initiatives have been underway to investigate the issues in which type of multiple access technologies could be most suitable for B3G wireless applications. Some suggested that current CDMA technologies, all based on direct- sequence CDMA, are suited only for slow-speed continuous transmission; applications such as voice services, but may not be a good choice for high-speed burst-type traffic in future all-IP B30 wireless systems.

The articles in this special section present the most recent advances in amateur drone surveillance network architecture and technologies. The advancement in communication, networking and sensing technologies has attracted researchers, hobbyists, and investors to deploy mini-drones, a.k.a. unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). Drones have boundless viable applications due to their small size and ability to fly without an on-board pilot such as in agriculture, surveillance, and numerous public services. The use of drones for achieving high speed wireless communication is one of the most significant applications for next-generation communication systems (5G). However, their deployment poses several public safety threats to national institutions such as atomic plants, historic places, and the homes of public officials because of their ability to carry explosives and other destructive chemicals. To cope with these security threats, the deployment of surveillance drones is required to monitor amateur drones. The main motivation of deploying surveillance drones is to keep an eye on amateur drones, which can cause serious disasters if no precautionary measures are taken on time. The increasing use of surveillance drones presents challenges such as robust detection, tracking, intruder localization, and jamming. The accuracy of detection is a basic requirement of the system. In general, accurate detection is time-consuming. In fact, a precise moving object detection method makes tracking more reliable and faster, and supports correct classification, which is quite important for surveillance drones to be successful. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pervasively implemented IoT systems are introducing unprecedented threats to our society. In this article, aiming to explore the security impact from the emerging and anarchistic IoT systems, we survey the state of the art of the security and privacy issues in the smart IoT world from a networking perspective. We predict that IoT systems will be extensively used by hackers to commit malicious actions given the features of IoT devices and systems. We also discuss the privacy issue caused by IoT systems. Finally, we present our understanding of counterattacks from both the application and theoretical aspects. We hope this article will shed light on the research field for interested readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in networking, caching, and computing have significant impacts on the developments of smart cities. Nevertheless, these important enabling technologies have traditionally been studied separately in the existing works on smart cities. In this article, we propose an integrated framework that can enable dynamic orchestration of networking, caching, and computing resources to improve the performance of applications for smart cities. Then we present a novel big data deep reinforcement learning approach. Simulation results with different system parameters are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Modern military communications systems continue to face a number of unique challenges not present in commercial enterprises. These challenges include among other things, operating in contested environments, low bandwidth communications links, unpredictable topological changes, and the need for special priority and security level considerations. In the face of these challenges, there is a need to leverage and build upon the explosive information technology advances being made in the commercial markets. This Feature Topic explores an interesting and important crosssection of topics along these lines, spanning communications layers from physical, through networking and higher layer IT services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Comsoc's Marketing Standing Committee oversees the marketing programs and works in collaboration with the Marketing staff for strategizing, planning, and implementing the BoG-approved marketing plan. ComSoc's Information Technology Standing Committee is to steer, plan, and oversee ComSoc's IT initiatives and projects to ensure that any current and future IT activities are well planned and are consistent with ComSoc's membership and financial interests. In this issue of the President's Page, I am pleased to introduce Fambirai Takawira, the ComSoc Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), and Rose Qingyang Hu, ComSoc Chief Information Officer (CIO), to share with you ComSoc ongoing activities and plans on IT and marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and communication technologies (ICT) widely contribute to the global economy and society through the tremendous pace of innovations and new applications, rapidly changing the way that people live in almost every aspect. However, ICT can also have a profound impact on the global environment, which could be either positive or negative. This IEEE Series on Green Communications and Computing Networks is now established to discuss the concepts, principles, mechanisms, design, algorithms, analyses, and research challenges relevant to ICT and their environmental impacts, which could be referred to as ?green ICT.? Here the term green is not only used to include energy or energy efficiency issues, but is also considered in the broader context of environmental impact and enablement of sustainability through communication and computing networks. A common misunderstanding is that green is simply equivalent to energy or energy efficiency issues. Actually, the field will explore more and more green topics relevant to issues other than energy or energy efficiency. Thus, this Series will not only address green communications, green computing, and relevant systems, but also investigate using communications, computing, and relevant technologies to achieve green objectives for a sustainable world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Network-centric warfare is a no-way-back trend in modern military operations. The application of this concept ranges from upper-level decision making echelons to troop guidance on the battlefield, and many studies have been carried out in this area. However, most of these are concerned with either the higher-level strategic networks, that is, the networks linking the higher echelons with abundant resources, satellite communications, or even a whole network infrastructure, or high-end TEN, representing resource-rich troops in the field, with military aircraft, battleships, or ground vehicles equipped with powerful wireless communication devices and (almost) unrestricted energy resources for communication. However, these studies fail to take into account the "last-mile TEN," which comprises resource constrained communication devices carried by troopers, equipping sensor nodes deployed in the field or small unmanned aerial vehicles. In an attempt to fill this gap in the studies on battlefield networking, this article seeks to combine software-defined and delay-tolerant approaches to support the diverse range of strict requirements for applications in the last-mile TEN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pace of development in radio communications continues to be rapid and unceasing. The field originally began as a way to exchange brief messages with ships at sea, then moved to supporting information and entertainment broadcasting, advanced to permit individuals to communicate over long distances, and has now progressed as far as enabling machines of all sizes to talk to each other without human intervention. Of course, each step of this seemingly unstoppable march is facilitated by the efforts of thousands of scientists and engineers to advance the state of the art in small increments. Over the years, we have taken pleasure in introducing some of these advancements in our issues. This issue of the Radio Communications Series has no less than four articles dealing with cutting-edge topics in wireless communications. The topics themselves are relatively diverse, beginning with high-level aspects of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and ending with PHY layer processing for full-duplex communications. However, they all share the same characteristics, in that they seek to extend the reach and efficiency of wireless communications technologies into the furthest nooks and crannies of our world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information is the link between business services and ICT (information and communications technologies). Information modelling captures business requirements so they can be communicated in such a way that ICT applications are developed to support services. Information should be stable and organized in a way that enables service deployment flexibility when it comes to process and organization. Information modelling enables a common language within a business or an organization, and between businesses. Often, several different concepts commonly in use mean the same thing. Also, similarly named concepts can have different meanings and definitions. Standardized information modelling is used to align these concepts and their definitions. As we evolve toward a truly networked society, the demand will grow for market driven standardization of modelling and the deployment of standardized business services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers, a sister society of IEEE Computer Society in India. It was founded in November 1953 that aimed to strengthen science and technology of electronics, telecommunications, computers, and information technology. It provides underprivileged students who cannot afford to study at engineering colleges and universities the opportunity to attain higher technical qualifications.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one about challenges and opportunities in managing maritime networks and another one about business-driven information technology management.

Rapid advances in information and communication technologies have led to the emergence of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) play a pivotal role in CPSs, particularly for operations such as surveillance and monitoring. However, these WSNs are subject to various types of cyberattacks that can cause damage, theft, or destruction of sensitive data, in addition to disruption of services provided by CPSs. To strengthen cybersecurity in WSN-enabled CPSs, various researchers have proposed a new category of efficient algorithms, inspired by biological phenomena. We present a careful review of different bio-inspired techniques developed for improving cybersecurity of CPSs using WSNs. Additionally, we propose a generic bio-inspired model called Swarm Intelligence for WSN Cybersecurity (SIWC) that addresses drawbacks of prior bio-inspired approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the developments in information and communications technology (ICT), people are involving in and connecting via various forms of communities in the cyber-physical space, such as online communities, opportunistic (offline) social networks, and location-based social networks. Different communities have distinct features and strengths. With humans playing the bridge role, these communities are implicitly interlinked. In contrast with the existing studies that mostly consider a single community, this article addresses the interaction among distinct communities. In particular, we present an emerging research area - cross-community sensing and mining (CSM), which aims to connect heterogeneous, cross-space communities by revealing the complex linkage and interplay among their properties and identifying human behavior patterns by analyzing the data sensed/collected from multi-community environments. The article describes and discusses the research background, characters, general framework, research challenges, as well as our practice of CSM. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on planning and replanning of virtual infrastructures over optical cloud infrastructures comprising integrated optical network and IT resources. This concept has been developed in the context of the European project GEYSERS. GEYSERS has proposed a novel multi-layer architecture, described in detail, that employs optical networking capable of provisioning optical network and IT resources for end-to-end cloud service delivery. The procedures required to perform virtual infrastructure planning and replanning at the different architecture layers are also detailed. An optimization scheme suitable to dynamically plan and replan virtual infrastructures is presented and compared to conventional approaches, and the benefits of dynamic replanning are discussed and quantified. The final project demonstration, focusing on planning, replanning, and dynamically establishing virtual infrastructures over the physical resources, is presented, while some emulation results are provided to further evaluate the performance of the GEYSERS solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second meeting of the IEEE Technical Activities Board (TAB) was held in San Diego, California during 28-29 June, and I would like to share some items of interest to you. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IEEE Communications Society (Com-Soc), as a global organization of Communications professionals, relies heavily on state of the art Information and Communication Technology (ICT). ICT is essential for ComSoc governance and operations, and to host its community and group activities. All ComSoc activities involve participation from volunteers who live on various continents and in different time zones. Therefore, the ICT infrastructure is essential in keeping such a global Society operational. The Communications Society's ICT infrastructure and services are the technological foundation for "ComSoc On-Line." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Internet has experienced a tremendous growth in the past three decades, evolving from a network of a few hundred hosts to a platform linking billions of "things" globally, including individual people as well as enterprises of various sizes, through computers and computerized devices of any conceivable size and capability and the applications running on them. The growth of the Internet shows no signs of slowing down and it steadily becomes the cause of a new pervasive paradigm in computing and communications. This new paradigm enhances the traditional Internet into a smart Internet of Things (IoT) created around intelligent interconnections of diverse objects in the physical world, such as vehicles, cell phones, habitats, and habitat occupants. It utilizes low-cost information gathering and dissemination devices, such as sensors and RFID tags, that facilitate fast-paced interactions among the objects themselves as well as the objects and persons in any place and at any time. IoT will usher in a wide range of smart applications and services to cope with many of the challenges individuals and organizations face in their everyday lives. For example, remote healthcare monitoring systems could aid in managing costs and alleviating the shortage of healthcare personnel; intelligent transportation systems could aid in reducing traffic congestion and inevitably the ills caused by it such as air pollution; smart distribution systems from utility grids to supply chains could aid in improving the quality and reducing the cost of their respective goods and services; tagged objects could result in more systematic recycling and effective waste disposal, and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the Internet connection services which was committed to Internet security, offered by the Sysadmin, Audit, Network, Security (SANS) Institute in the U.S. There were several resources contributed by SANS Institute in the security and information technology industry including SANS NewsBites, SANS Internet Storm Center and SANS Webcasts. These resources were first limited to the SANS alumni, however, it was made available to everyone because of its security measures. The NewsBites resource updates everyone on email newsletters and other information developments. SANS Internet Storm Center served as the warning system of the Internet. SANS Webcasts enable users to choose for different security products.

Next-generation access networks must provide bandwidths in the range of 50-100 Mb/s per residential customer. Today, most broadband services are provided through copper-based VDSL or fiber-based GPON/EPON solutions. Candidates for next-generation broadband access networks include several variants of WDM-PONs. The total cost of ownership of these solutions is determined mainly by operational expenditures, where the cost of energy is one of the major contributors. We show that a combination of WDM-PON with active L2 switching can minimize the total cost of ownership while at the same time offering the highest scalability for future bandwidth demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike the conventional way of managing IT that uses technical objectives and metrics only, such as availability, response time, and throughput, business-driven IT management (BDIM) drives IT management decisions from a business perspective by adding business measures, such as profit, cost, and customer experience. Research on BDIM is gathering interest in both academia and industry worldwide. This article introduces BDIM, discusses how it can be enacted, and illustrates its benefits and gains over conventional IT management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latest advances in traffic measurement, analysis, and modeling play an important role in automatically building and maintaining a distributed intelligent monitoring layer that we describe as the awareness plane. The purpose of this article is to describe the components of this awareness plane in the areas of flexible network measurement, application and relationship discovery, and traffic classification, as well as data aggregation and semantically enriched infrastructure models. We present management services and scenarios, and list the research challenges on the path to integrating the components and making them interoperate for future autonomic service and network management approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ITU-T offers a unique contribution-driven and consensus-based environment, with the latest collaboration tools and facilities. Working methods and approval processes are subject to regular review. Today standards (ITU-T Recommendations) can be approved and published in a remarkably short period of time — in six languages and with tight editorial controls applied. Procedures have been fine tuned to ensure that work can be started in a new area in a timeframe which matches the fast-paced ICT environment to which ITU-T Recommendations provide a strong set of foundations. This article outlines ITU-T rules and structure for those interested in contributing to the work of the world's only international, intergovernmental standards organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines a possible way of improving the performance of the presence service within IMS networks without modifying the presence and group management enabler. This can be achieved by means of a presence network agent (PNA). The PNA has been defined by 3GPP in [1]; it is a new logic entity within the IMS core network that is able to publish the presence information on behalf of the presentity user agent. The PNA improves performance because it reduces the presence signaling load within the radio access network without downgrading the freshness and richness of the presence information. The article's goal is to provide the reader with useful information about the PNA and our experience with PNA implementation and deployment. We first describe the PNA concept as defined by 3GPP, highlighting the open issues still present in the standardization and the possible optimizations, subsequently we present an actual implementation of a PNA handling busy/idle states for IMS calls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most approaches developed to query sensoractuator networks (SANET5) are either application-specific or generic. Application-specific SANETs provide limited reusability, are not cost effective, and may require extensive reprogramming efforts to make the network able to serve new applications. Generic SANETs usually require that a sizeable code be deployed on the nodes regardless of the specific requirements of the application at hand. More important, they may not be optimized to fully exploit the specific characteristics and query patterns of a given application. In this article we introduce service-oriented SANETs (SOSANET5) as a novel approach to building customizable SANETs. SOSANETs provide the benefits of both application-specific SANETs (e.g., energy efficiency, scalability) and generic SANETs (e.g., reusability) and avoid most of their limitations. We implemented our approach in TinySOA, a SOSANET developed on top of TinyOS. We conducted an evaluation of TinySOA that included a comparison with TinyDB, an established query processing system for sensor networks. The obtained empirical results show that TinySOA outperforms TinyDB in many aspects including energy consumption, scalability, and response time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IEEE 802.15.3 is a standard that supports high data rate for wireless personal area networks. It implements a centralized topology for network monitoring and control. The centralized piconet coordinator (PNC) needs to be dynamically selected depending on a number of categories that measure its abilities as the most capable device compared to the surrounding devices in the network. This article pre- sents an extension to the PNC selection criteria in IEEE 802.15.3 by modifying the reserved fields readily available in the standard to support user-centricity as well as other higher layer service dependent criteria. This article also develops the implementation process for the message header exchange between devices to support this new selection process. In addition, simulations are carried out that show the proof of concept of the manner in which this new criteria could be implemented in IEEE 802. 15.3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IEEE 802.16 standard, commonly known as WiMAX, is the latest technology that has promised to offer broadband wireless access over long distance. Since 2001 WiMAX has evolved from 802.16 to 802.16d for fixed wireless access, and to the new IEEE 802.16e standard with mobility support. In this article we provide an. overview of the state-of-the-art mobile WiMAX technology and its development. We focus our discussion on QoS provisioning and mobile WiMAX specification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most expensive costs in satellite communication are incurred by the space segment. Therefore, effort should be focused on the efficient use of this resource. One aspect is the optimization of the physical layer, to approach the Shannon limit of channel capacity. In IP-based networks, communication between arbitrary terminals can be established, which must hold for IP-based satellite networks as well. A commonly used topology is the star network, where data are routed via the master station, which in case of satellite communications introduces a double hop for terminal-to-terminal connections [1]. A double hop requires twice the, bandwidth and twice the response time, which is very unattractive for interactive services. This drawback is avoided with a fully meshed topology, where terminals can communicate directly. Of course, an appropriately designed access system is required in this context. The well-known multi-frequency, time-division multiple access (MF-TDMA) scheme slices the channel capacity along both time and frequency axes. Each fragment (slot) can be used by any station for direct communication [2, 3]. This article describes the method on an abstraction layer, starting with the high-level timing that copes with frame numbers; the low-level timing that maps the frame numbers to time instants of the local time scale; and ends with the time stamp handled in the hardware, where calculation delays and filter flushing affect the received time stamp. Compared to commercial systems, the method described in this article uses differential time stamps, which reduces the effort of the synchronization procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Giving the operator the ability to manage in-home devices greatly increases the potential of the cost-efficient provision of new profitable services. In this spirit, standardization undertaken by the DSL forum not only addresses remote management of the residential gateway but recently, also extends to in-house devices. We propose a solution that bridges remote management specified by CWMP with UPnP, already established inside the home environment. This approach will enable providers to remotely configure and manage in-house UPnP-enabled equipment, thus accelerating the deployment of new services. We investigate the nature of the two protocols and specify the bridging functionality, taking into consideration scalability and transparency. Experimental results support the applicability of the proposed approach, highlight the importance of message filtering, and provide general insight into the interplay intricacies of the particular protocol functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As communications networks become increasingly dynamic, heterogeneous, less reliable, and larger in scale, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to effectively manage these networks using traditional approaches that rely on human monitoring and intervention to ensure they operate within desired bounds. Researchers and practitioners are pursuing the vision of autonomic network management, which we view as the capability of network entities to self-govern their behavior within the constraints of business goals that the network as a whole seeks to achieve. However, applying autonomic principles to network management is challenging for a number of reasons, including: • A means is required to enable business rules to determine the set of resources and/or services to be provided. • Contextual changes in the network must be sensed and interpreted, because new management policies may be required when context changes. • As context changes, it may be necessary to adapt the management control loops that are used to ensure that system functionality adapts to meet changing user requirements, business goals, and environmental conditions. • A means is required to verify modeled data and to add new data dynamically so that the system can learn and reason about itself and its environment. This article provides an introduction to the FOCALE autonomic network management architecture, which is designed to address these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on how radio frequency identification (RFID) system works, its various use, and its shortcomings. In RFID system interference between readers occurs when a reader picks up another readers' transmit signal that has the same frequency. Initially RFID systems were deployed at a single site with communication among few application servers. Many analysts have predicted that RFID can be deployed as a global network device within 10 years. But most information technology (IT) departments in several business enterprises are not equipped to support field trials involving server-based RFID middleware for extended periods of time.

This article addresses a number of problems that plague the designers and developers of network performance monitors, due to the nature of the data made available by the agents in the devices of interest. It is hoped that by offering the perspective of a performance monitor designer and bringing these issues to light, we might influence future agents to present data that is a little more accommodating to the needs of performance monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practical success of next-generation mobile systems such as 4G relies largely on its flexibility in providing adaptive and cost-effective services. Service discovery is an essential mechanism to achieve this goal. Based on the investigation of the existing service discovery protocols, this article proposes a new service discovery methodology for next-generation mobile systems: model-based service discovery or MBSD. By taking advantage of the Object Management Group (0MG) Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) technique, model-based service discovery (MBSD) can generate service description automatically and more precisely. Furthermore, if developed via MDA, the discovered services can be regenerated into their model format and as such facilitate the service re-engineering in a finer manner. The system architecture of MBSD and its operation are presented and implemented. The proposed methodology is validated via a mobile service scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an operators' view of the evolution towards broadband optical access networks. Firstly, we describe a possible evolution of the optical access solution for point-to-point and point-to-multipoint architectures. Subsequently, currently available optical access solutions are evaluated and compared. Finally, we consider regulatory issues inside and outside Europe, and conclude by offering a recommendation with respect to regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although research on mobile ad hoc networks has been ongoing for some time, there are relatively few experiences with real ad hoc networks in laboratory testbeds, and users never use multihop ad hoc networks. This seems due to a gap between what end users might find useful, and what research is currently addressing. Indeed, a large portion of research activities concentrate on the development of novel solutions to optimize lower-layer protocols in often unrealistic settings, while little attention is devoted to the quality of service (QoS) these networks may provide to end users in realistic applicative scenarios. The MobileMAN project tried to contribute to reduce this gap by promoting a research plan aimed at combining theoretical research with the integration of developed solutions in prototypes to be used for validating them in realistic small- and medium-scale scenarios (few hops and 10-20 nodes). The aim is to design and integrate a full protocol stack and experimentally quantify the QoS the system is able to provide to the users. This research approach points out that, also in this limited setting, several problems still exist to construct efficient multihop ad hoc networks. In the next article [1] we discuss how cross layering can be exploited to fix some performance problems identified in our analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South Korean government declared the 1T839 Strategy as a new development strategy for the IT sector in 2004. Under this strategy, the introduction and development of eight (8) new IT services are expected to encourage investment in three (3) key network infrastructures, which in turn, will promote the development of nine (9) new growth engines, including equipment, terminal, software, contents, and so on. Moreover, each of the 20 (8 + 3 + 9) sectors of the 1T839 Strategy will reap synergistic effects as a result of concurrent growth through cooperation among the government, private sector, and research institutes. The 1T839 Strategy is anchored on the belief that IT will bring about qualitative changes in the economic and social paradigm, ultimately aiming to realize a ubiquitous world by forming a virtual circle of developing new services, infrastructures, and growth engines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in information technology and the great proliferation of the Internet have changed nearly every aspect of the work and life of human beings. Despite progress in networked entertainment, many music professionals and enthusiasts are still sticking to the traditional away of carrying out rehearsals and concerts. Music performance in this way requires physical presence of the participants and has a number of inherent limitations. We introduce a novel system called network-centric music performance (NMP) that enables multiparty music performance through cyberspace. Our target is to support real-time multichannel natural audio streaming over the network, using audio compression schemes that can provide acceptable a audio quality. A system like this is bandwidth-demanding and highly delay-sensitive, and requires synchronization of the audio streams. Hence, support from the underlying end systems and networks is critical. However, the current Source coding mechanisms and the best effort nature of the Internet pose many challenges to achieve the desired quality of service. We have implemented a prototype of NMP, and exploited end system and network influences on NMP. The work was done in a LAN environment using Linux PCs. The system enables two different application scenarios: real-time rehearsal and rehearsal on demand. Real-time multichannel audio transport and different audio compression Schemes are supported. Our evaluation results based on both subjective and objective measurements show that the system provides sufficient audio quality level for the target application in such an environment. The scalability test also revealed that the system scales well with increase of clientele. In the future we will extend our system for networks spanning larger distances and experiment with more realistic network condition in the Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the optical storage area network is becoming increasing important in computer network architectures, with the amount of information being presented and requested on the Internet ever increasing. One of the key questions is what is the role of, and how do we control, an optical switch core within a SAN to optimize its performance. In this article we review two potential optical switch technologies and asses their performance as a SAN optical switch core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the effect of legal claims on the standardization of intellectual property rights (IPR). Cases which illustrate the difficulty of developing standards for information and communication technology where companies claim IPR; IPR rules of standards bodies; IPR market strategies. INSETS: JAVA TECHNOLOGY AND COMPATIBILITY;JAVA IN ECMA;SUN VS. MICROSOFT.

Proposes tools to align standardization strategies with the business objectives of a firm. Reasons for seeking a standard; Interfaces to be standardized; Standardization model proposed.