Integrated Broadband Networks

"Explanations of the technologies are provided within the concepts of architecture and layering models, multiplexing and switching methods, routing algorithms and protocols, network control, traffic management methods, and QoS support. The book also offers one of the first overviews of the IP over WDM field."--Cover.

Addresses congestion control and traffic integration in fast packet networks. The book describes how larger transmission bandwidths and multi-media applications have created a demand for integrated networks and how this demand has spawned new problems and issues for the industry.

The rapid development of optical fiber transmission technology has created the possibility for constructing digital networks that are as ubiquitous as the current voice network but which can carry video, voice, and data in massive qlJantities. How and when such networks will evolve, who will pay for them, and what new applications will use them is anyone's guess. There appears to be no doubt, however, that the trend in telecommunication networks is toward far greater transmission speeds and toward greater heterogeneity in the requirements of different applications. This book treats some of the central problems involved in these networks of the future. First, how does one switch data at speeds orders of magnitude faster than that of existing networks? This problem has roots in both classical switching for telephony and in switching for packet networks. There are a number of new twists here, however. The first is that the high speeds necessitate the use of highly parallel processing and place a high premium on computational simplicity. The second is that the required data speeds and allowable delays of different applications differ by many orders of magnitude. The third is that it might be desirable to support both point to point applications and also applications involving broadcast from one source to a large set of destinations.

Integrated broadband networks (IBNs), when compared to high definition television, are seen by many as probably being more important to the future industrial competitiveness of the United States in the telecommunications field, and as certainly raising far more complex issues of economics, law, regulation, and social impact. The first concerted attempt to identify and investigate these issues was started in 1987 by a leading US telecommunications policy research center. This book presents key contributions to that study, each written by a leading authority in his field. Its breadth of coverage does justice to the multifaceted nature of the core policy issues; its scholarly standards make it a valuable resource for future researchers; and its relevance to immediate policy concerns makes it required reading for those who need to understand what will continue to be a highly controversial public debate for a long time to come.

The importance of Broadband Communications in shaping the future telecommunication network has achieved world-wide recognition. This volume validates the huge significance of the field and explores key items concerning research, development and applications. The ideas and experiences presented will be of great interest to operators and users, for research and development, from both a technical and a commercial perspective.

This is an elementary textbook on an advanced topic: broadband telecommunica tion networks. I must declare at the outset that this book is not primarily intended for an audience of telecommunication specialists who are weIl versed in the concepts, system architectures, and underlying technologies of high-speed, multi media, bandwidth-on-demand, packet-switching networks, although the techni caIly sophisticated telecommunication practitioner may wish to use it as a refer ence. Nor is this book intended to be an advanced textbook on the subject of broadband networks. Rather, this book is primarily intended for those eager to leam more about this exciting fron tier in the field of telecommunications, an audience that includes systems designers, hardware and software engineers, en gineering students, R&D managers, and market planners who seek an understand ing of local-, metropolitan-, and wide-area broadband networks for integrating voice, data, image, and video. Its primary audience also includes researchers and engineers from other disciplines or other branches of telecommunications who anticipate a future involvement in, or who would simply like to leam more about, the field of broadband networks, along with scientific researchers and corporate telecommunication and data communication managers whose increasingly sophis ticated applications would benefit from (and drive the need for) broadband net works. Advanced topics are certainly not ignored (in fact, a plausible argument could be mounted that aIl of the material is advanced, given the infancy of the topic).