Special issue: QoS, control, and security in next generation networks

Abstract

In the NGN initiative, the design of future networks should be driven by services in a top down manner. Services will be typically provided over connections which may straddle different transport networks and network providers, and satisfy security and quality of service constraints. This special issue focuses on some of the aspects of the Next Generation Networks. The main mechanism for delivering services is the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). In the paper “Resource Optimization and Security in Enterprise Service Computing”, K. Xiong and H. Perros present a framework for trustworthy Web-based enterprise services and an analytic method for resource allocation within such systems subject to percentile end-to-end delays and server availability constraints. Setting up connections with quality of service guarantees is part of the NGN requirements. To that effect, A. Hamidian, and U. Korner in their paper “Extending EDCA With Distributed Resource Reservation For QoS Guarantees” propose an enhancement of EDCA, the contention-based medium access mechanism of 802.11, so that multimedia applications with QoS requirement can reserve medium access time. The proposed scheme is further extended to a multi-hop wireless network. Wireless technologies can facilitate service delivery since they will offer large bandwidth at low prices. In the paper “A Piloting Plane For Controlling Wireless Applications”, the authors T. Bullot, D. Gaiti, G. Pujolle, and H. Zimmermann, propose an automatic pilot system that can be used to