Invitation

INFOCOM:
The Conference on Computer Communications

INFOCOM conferences take place once a year. They are sponsored by the Computer Communications Technical Committees of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies:

The IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Computer Communications

The IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on Computer Communications (TCCC)

The first Infocom conference took place in 1982.

INFOCOM is back in San Francisco and is an event not to be missed. Its program of tutorials, panels, and technical sessions will not only cover traditional networking topics, but also introduce numerous new areas.

Tutorials
A set of three full day and four half-day tutorials aimed at industrial and academic researchers as well as professionals responsible for the operation and deployment of networks, will provide a comprehensive treatment of some of the most important aspects of today's and future networks. Emerging information delivery mechanisms will be addressed in a full day tutorial on new access technologies, in particular ADSL, and in a half-day tutorial on satellite data networks. Both technologies have the potential to transform networks as we know them, either by removing existing entry barriers or by drastically expanding reachability. Two other key building blocks for the deployment of new applications, multicast support and transport protocols, will be covered in another set of half-day and full-day tutorials, respectively. Aspects of scalability, reliability, and support for multimedia applications will be reviewed. Finally, issues related to the overall manageability and usability of the network will be the focus of three additional tutorials. A full-day tutorial will be devoted to the critical aspect of network security, the basic mechanisms and options for delivering quality-of- service in packet networks will be the topic of a half-day tutorial as will the emerging and important topic of network economics, i.e., the many options and challenges faced when pricing new network services.

Keynote Speaker
The tutorials will be followed by a densely packed three days of technical sessions. Starting with the keynote speech by Dr. Alan Baratz, President of Sun Microsystems' JavaSoft business unit, on "Wrap and Embrace: How the Java (TM) Technology Changes Everything", attendees will be exposed to a major new trend in the networking industry, and get a first hand view from one of the industry's visionary on how Java may impact what network do and how they do it. Specifically, according to Dr. Baratz, the computing industry is in the midst of a technological revolution. The Internet and the Web began this revolution by enabling information to be electronically distributed and rendered without regard to the underlying end-user machine or system software architectures. Java is now enabling that same cross-platform distribution and execution of software applications. The result is the emergence of a computing model where end-user machine architectures and system software are commodities rather than industry drivers. The value is moving to the applications and persistence is moving into the network. This fundamental change is driving new industry challenges and opportunities, requiring new models for analysis.

Keynote Speech
The keynote speech will then be followed by a series of 43 technical sessions and three panels, that will span the latest research results and highlight new networking research areas.

Panels
Two of the panels will take on key topics of much recent controversy. A panel on "Evolution of Internet and Telecommunications" will involve panelists from ISPs, traditional telcos, and the Internet development community, and will attempt to sort through the complex issues of who the future telecommunications providers will be and what services they will provide. A panel on "Active Networks - Hype or Next Big Thing" will bring together several distinguished researchers who will argue their own perspectives on what Active Networks are, and whether they truly represent a major new research initiative. More important, they will try to shed some light on the core research issues and main technical challenges that need to be addressed, if Active Networks are to become a reality. The third panel will echo some of the themes of the "Broadband Satellite Networks" tutorial and will discuss technologies and architectures of "Broadband Wireless Networks". Some of the questions that will be asked include whether the QoS guarantees of wired networks can truly be extended over wireless networks, and whether ubiquitous and seamless mobility is indeed an achievable goal.

Technical Sessions
The 43 technical sessions consist of a total of 172 papers, that represent the outcome of an extremely rigorous and thorough review process. About 800 papers were submitted, making this year's INFOCOM the most selective ever. It is also one of the most geographically diverse, with over 30% of the papers originating from outside of North America. This diversity is further echoed in the range of topics being represented. They include not only some of the traditional INFOCOM favorites such as quality-of-service, switching, routing, optical networks, congestion control, etc., but also many new topics such as active networks, mobility management, end-to-end protocol performance, protocol verification and testing, network security, management and pricing, end systems, and Web related studies.

Overall, INFOCOM will help you broaden your understanding of networking, provide you with access to the latest research results, and let you interact with a unique crowd of professionals from the field of networking at large.

Secretariat

Proceedings

List of Past and Future Conferences

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Prepared by Ramesh Nagarajan

Invitation

INFOCOM:The Conference on Computer Communications

INFOCOM:
The Conference on Computer Communications