Joan Serrat-Fernandez

Fast and Efficient Context-Aware Services gives a thorough explanation of the state-of-the-art in Context-Aware-Services (CAS). The authors describe all major terms and components of CAS, defining context and discussing the requirements of context-aware applications and their use in 3rd generation services. The text covers the service creation problem as well as the network technology alternatives to support these services and discusses active and programmable networks in detail. It gives an insight into the practical approach followed in the CONTEXT project, supplying concrete guidelines for building successful context-aware services. Fast and Efficient Context-Aware Services: * Provides comprehensive and in-depth information on state-of-the-art CAS technology. * Proposes a system architecture for CAS creation and delivery, discussing service management and active network layers. * Describes the service lifecycle functional architecture, covering service authoring, customization, invocation, and assurance. * Explains system design considerations and details, system evaluation criteria, test-bed requirements, and evaluation results. Fast and Efficient Context-Aware Services is an invaluable resource for telecommunications developers, researchers in academia and industry, advanced students in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, telecoms operators, as well as telecommunication management and operator personnel.

Although IP and WDM technologies are expected to become the dominant network technologies, they will be introduced gradually to complement and replace ATM and SDH network solutions. This text reviews and researches results for the deployment and management of IP over WDM networks with guaranteed service level agreements. Design details cover the integrated management requirements and architectures needed to ensure direct and seamless deployment and integration of IP and WDM. Verification of the management and networking concepts has been performed on a research testbed built from WDM rings and IP routing equipment as part of the WINMAN project, which is a European Union-sponsored research project. The volume concludes with an outlook on the expected evolutions of network management and the deployment of optical networks.