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Reviewer: Harry Skianis

The material in this book is characterized by novelty and depth. Professionals and scientists worldwide have spent their time and experience on this work, with a clear target: to provide insight on the design of managed Internet protocol (IP) programmable networks. The book is structured and enriched with an eye toward attracting operators, network and service providers, system designers, managers, academics and researchers, and graduate students in the field of telecommunication systems and networks. The book provides a clear, complete, and concise history of programmable networks; presents challenges; and takes a look forward at future goals. A positive aspect of the book is the important practical approach it adopts toward the design directives of present and future IP networks. A total of 19 chapters, all of which are supported by extensive lists of references, are included in the book, along with a section devoted to the interests and accomplishments of the editors, and an index. Chapters are written by different authors, reflecting the outcome of the Information Society Technologies (IST) Future Active IP Networks (FAIN) project, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) projects cofunded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and national French and German research projects, under the coordinating actions of a short list of editors. The authors progress from an introduction, presenting background information, to programmable network technologies and management systems, to problem specification and novel solutions in the area, to an outlook for necessary research and development in service programmability. The introductory chapter, chapter 1, discusses the importance of programmable networks, presents an outline of the book, and presents the FAIN project and consortium as the main source of material and ideas. Chapter 2, "Programmable Networks: Background," provides a review of present research and development in programmable network technologies and platforms, following the main schools of thought: the Opensig community and DARPA. Chapter 3, "Programmable Networks' Security: Background," focuses on security challenges and architectures for programmable networks, and the future impact on various systems, such as overlay networks, middleboxes, and mobile systems. Complementary key aspects are discussed, such as the trade-off between programmability and security, programming languages and operating systems, trust in networking, and authorization and resource control, with the SwitchWare system acting as a representative paradigm in an attempt to pull all of the above elements together. Chapter 4, "Programmable Network Management and Services: Background," provides a short description of the most significant research projects on the management of active and programmable networks, ending with future directions of research and standardization activities. Chapter 5, "SwitchWare Active Platform," discusses the deployment of the SwitchWare platform, and its impact on many areas of network and security technology. Chapter 6, "Peer-to-Peer Programmability," is a well-selected survey of peer-to-peer technologies in relation to network programmability. Chapter 7, "Programmable Networks' Requirements," introduces the central part of the book, with the identification and definition of the requirements of active and programmable networks, based on certain business, technical, and application-oriented considerations. Chapter 8, "FAIN Network Overview," describes a novel architecture with regard to programmable networks, developed as part of the FAIN project for dynamic service deployment in heterogeneous networks, and evaluated in a pan-European testbed. Chapter 9, "Virtual Environments and Management," introduces the concept of virtual environments, as presented in FAIN, and their management, as well as requirement, design, and implementation aspects. Chapter 10, "Demultiplexing," presents the demultiplexing and multiplexing framework for incoming and outgoing packet data in programmable networks. Chapter 11, "Security Management," addresses security challenges under the active and programmable networks framework, and introduces a security architecture based on a set of principles, services, and mechanisms that meet the needs of the users. Chapter 12, "Resource Control Framework," discusses the resource control mechanisms and framework of programmable networks, with an outline of the requirements, design aspects, main functionalities, and model implementation. Chapter 13, "Control Execution Environments," presents the design of execution environments applicable to the control plane, and configuring and monitoring network elements. Chapter 14, "High-Performance Execution Environments," focuses on existing and prospective solutions for the design of software high-performance execution environments. Chapter 15, "Network Management," presents design and implementation aspects of a hierarchically distributed policy-based network management architecture. Chapter 16, "Service Deployment in Programmable Networks," introduces the active service deployment mechanisms in programmable networks, seen as a number of preparatory activities, such as release, distribution, installation, and activation of service code just before service operation. Chapter 17, "DiffServ Scenario," outlines the relationship between differentiated services management and traffic management in the context of virtual environment management, as described in chapter 9, using a tailor-made scenario out of the FAIN project to demonstrate the interactions between the aforementioned parts. Chapter 18, "WebTV Scenario," introduces a case study in order to validate the design and implementation of a programmable and fully managed network node for dynamic service creation. Chapter 19, "The Outlook," discusses the migration from programmable networks toward programmable service networks, based on certain research and development issues. This book clearly stands out in its detailing of the path of programmable networks for IP service deployment. It will be a welcome companion for system vendors, network operators, telecommunication developers, and the research community in general. There's a lot of material here, in a well-structured book: it will be a joy to read and revisit. Online Computing Reviews Service