Chapter 1 - Introducing network algorithmics

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Beyond specific techniques, this book distills a fundamental way of crafting solutions to internet bottlenecks that we call network algorithmics. This provides the reader tools to design different implementations for specific contexts and to deal with new bottlenecks that will undoubtedly arise in the changing world of networks. So what is network algorithmics? Network algorithmics goes beyond the design of efficient algorithms for networking tasks, though this has an important place. In particular, network algorithmics recognizes the primary importance of taking an interdisciplinary systems approach to streamlining network implementations. Network algorithmics is an interdisciplinary approach because it encompasses such fields as architecture and operating systems (for speeding up servers), hardware design (for speeding up network devices such as routers), and algorithm design (for designing scalable algorithms). Network algorithmics is also a systems approach, because it is described in this book using a set of 15 principles that exploit the fact that routers and servers are systems, in which efficiencies can be gained by moving functions in time and space between subsystems. The problems addressed by network algorithmics are fundamental networking performance bottle necks. The solutions advocated by network algorithmics are a set of fundamental techniques to address these bottlenecks. In this chapter we provide a quick preview of both the bottlenecks and the methods.