See also: http://www.comsoc.org/socstr/techcom/ntwrk/special.html

                         Special Issue on 

 Fast IP Packet Forwarding and Classification for
            Next Generation Internet Services

Guest Editors:

Milind M. Buddhikot
Department of Network Software Research
Lucent Bell Labs
Holmdel, NJ 07733-3030
EMAIL: milind@dnrc.bell-labs.com
Phone: (732)-949-5772
                                      Nick McKeown
                                      Dept. of Electrical Engineering and
                                      Computer Science
                                      Stanford University
                                      Stanford, CA 94305-9030
                                      EMAIL: nickm@ee.stanford.edu
                                      Phone:(650) 725-3641 
George Varghese
Department of Computer Science and
Engineering
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92040-0114
EMAIL: varghese@cs.ucsd.edu
Phone: (619)-822-0424 
                                       

                                       


Scope: 
Current trends indicate that the Internet evolution will progress in two dimensions: (1)
deployment of access and backbone networks that offer higher bandwidth to meet increased
demand and (2) introduction of new differentiated network services such as Virtual Private
Networks (VPNs), Network Address Translation (NAT), Encryption, Firewalls, and
Guaranteed Quality-of-Service (QoS), all of which provide value-added services to
customers and Internet Service Providers. Furthermore, as the internet evolves into a
revenue generating infrastructure, accounting, billing, and near-real-time network
monitoring functions will become important.

The realization of these trends requires that routers, client end-systems, and network
resident entities (such as monitoring and billing systems) all support high performance IP
packet forwarding together with new services. For example, fast implementations of packet
classification, route lookup, scheduling, packet demultiplexing, and switching seem necessary.

The topics of packet switching and scheduling are full subjects in their own right and have
been covered in previous special issues of IEEE Network magazine. We believe that several
research issues in the other areas of fast IP forwarding are also of timely interest. Thus, this
special issue of IEEE Network seeks to shed light on the state-of-the-art and future of these
remaining issues in fast IP packet forwarding. We seek articles of two kinds: (1) tutorials that
survey and contrast state-of-the-art and (2) papers that describe systems or
implementations with important insights. Topics of interest include:

     Router Software and Hardware Architectures 
           Evolution and Future 
     IP route lookup schemes 
     Layer-4 packet classification schemes
           Fast search and update operations on filter databases 
           Filter conflict detection, enumeration and resolution 
     Scalable network monitoring and accounting
           New architectures 
           New router primitives 
     Hardware implementations using CAMs and ASICs 
     Packet filtering in end-systems 
     OS support in end systems for differentiated services 
     Signaling and control for monitoring and accounting 

The guest editors request potential authors to send an email to Milind Buddhikot
(milind@dnrc.bell-labs.com), giving a URL where a postscript or PDF version of their
submission can be downloaded. All feature articles will then undergo a technical peer review
consistent with other archival publications.

Note: Authors may wish to consult the sections on author information and guidelines for
reviewers, which are given at http://www.comsoc.org/socstr/techcom/ntwrk/authors.html

Schedule:

     Submission Deadline:  July 1, 2000 
     Acceptance Notification: October  15, 2000 
     Final Manuscripts Due:  December 15, 2000 
     Publication of Completed Special Issue: March/April 2001