Guest editorial for the special issue

IP has become the dominant networking paradigm for the present century. The evolution towards an all-IP core network infrastructure continues, with an enriched IP layer often implementing the networking functionalities directly on top of WDM (Wave Division Multiplexed) links. Furthermore, IP over switched 1/10 GigaEthernet is replacing the traditional, relatively slow-speed, access technologies. Finally, the widespread deployment of non-3G wireless access networking technologies (such as 802.11 WiFi wireless LANs or 802.16 WiMax wireless MANs) requires IP to take over roles traditionally envisioned for 3G core networks. Thanks to the flexibility of IP, the management of traffic flows generated by a variety of applications (Web browsing, e-mail, telephony, audio and video distribution, multimedia multicasting, financial transactions, distributed gaming, domotics (home information), disaster recovery and business continuity, . . .), with extremely different performance requirements has become possible. This situation has generated a great interest in the development of techniques for the provisioning of Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees and for network optimization and control in IP-based infrastructures. However, the dramatically increasing size of the Internet on the one hand, and the development of new transmission technologies that continuously drive transmission speed increase on the other hand, have raised a number of scalability issues: the inability to tightly control QoS requirements, if not for highly aggregated flows, the difficulty in scaling switch and router size, the need to develop new models for traffic management of emerging popular applications (such as those based on the peer-topeer paradigm), and the planning and control of large-size heterogeneous networks. In 2006 and 2007, the Italian Ministry for University and Research funded four networking research programs, named BORA–BORA (on software routers), OSATE (on optics in switching), MIMOSA (on traffic measurements and modeling), and FAMOUS (on modeling peer-to-peer architectures). At the end of their activities, the project leaders jointly organized IT-NEWS 2008, a very successful international workshop held in Venezia in February 2008.