This volume contains the proceedings of a DIMACS Workshop on Robust Communication Networks held as part of the Special Year on Networks. Theoreticians and practitioners presented papers on the roles of architectural interconnection and survivability in the design, construction, operation, and application of robust communication networks. Due to the advent of VSLI and fiber optics technologies, it has become possible and feasible to design and construct large scale, high performance, high speed wireline and wireless communication networks that are also robust. This opens many challenging issues and problems for both the theory community and practitioners. Of particular interest is how these technological advances lead the way to new and challenging mathematical frontiers and set the direction for future research on and implementation of robust communication networks. The nine papers chosen for this volume represent the state of the art from a variety of perspectives.
The nine papers, selected from the 30 theoreticians and practitioners presented, explore minimal contention-free matrices with applications to multicasting, the optimal placement of repair servers for reliable multicast, an approximation algorithm for minimum-cost network design, constructing optical networks using combinatorial designs, and other matters. They are not indexed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
