This is an elementary textbook on an advanced topic: broadband telecommunica tion networks. I must declare at the outset that this book is not primarily intended for an audience of telecommunication specialists who are weIl versed in the concepts, system architectures, and underlying technologies of high-speed, multi media, bandwidth-on-demand, packet-switching networks, although the techni caIly sophisticated telecommunication practitioner may wish to use it as a refer ence. Nor is this book intended to be an advanced textbook on the subject of broadband networks. Rather, this book is primarily intended for those eager to leam more about this exciting fron tier in the field of telecommunications, an audience that includes systems designers, hardware and software engineers, en gineering students, R&D managers, and market planners who seek an understand ing of local-, metropolitan-, and wide-area broadband networks for integrating voice, data, image, and video. Its primary audience also includes researchers and engineers from other disciplines or other branches of telecommunications who anticipate a future involvement in, or who would simply like to leam more about, the field of broadband networks, along with scientific researchers and corporate telecommunication and data communication managers whose increasingly sophis ticated applications would benefit from (and drive the need for) broadband net works. Advanced topics are certainly not ignored (in fact, a plausible argument could be mounted that aIl of the material is advanced, given the infancy of the topic).

Optical networks, undersea networks, GSM, UMTS The recent explosion in broadband communications technologies has opened a new world of fast, flexible services and applications. To successfully implement these services, however, requires a solid understanding of the concepts and capabilities of broadband technologies and networks. Building Br

Broadband networks, such as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), frame relay, and leased lines, allow us to easily access multimedia services (data, voice, and video) in one package. Exploring why broadband networks are important in modern-day telecommunications, Introduction to Broadband Communication Systems covers the concepts and components of bot

The access network is expected to be one of the major battlegrounds of telecommunications network operators, since upgrades of the existing narrowband access network will be the critical factor in supplying multimedia broadband services in a competitive market. The future broadband access network architecture needs to be flexible enough to efficiently support the provision of a full set of broadband and narrowband services with a wide range of capacity demands. A wide range of broadband access technologies are available. Furthermore, the key issues in the upgrading of the very cost sensitive access network are financial as well as technological, both for incumbent and new entrant operators. Thus, in order to identify minimum-risk introductory strategies the economic viability of access network broadband upgrades needs to be carefully assessed. However, despite the definite need for techno-economic evaluations, very few books have been published in this field. One of the reasons might be that broadband access network upgrading only very recently gained wide recognition as a key challenge for broadband delivery. Secondly, this kind of strategic work and these studies tend to be considered rather sensitive by operators, and thus both results and methodologies are not usually readily available. Thirdly, the work reported in this book in many respects was a major pioneering effort, which quite ambitiously aimed at modelling the whole life-cycle costs and revenue streams of access network upgrades, as opposed to several other efforts, which often are limited to pure investment cost comparisons.

This book demystifies the amazing architecture and protocols of computers as they communicate over the Internet. While very complex, the Internet operates on a few relatively simple concepts that anyone can understand. Networks and networked applications are embedded in our lives. Understanding how these technologies work is invaluable. This book was written for everyone - no technical knowledge is required! While this book is not specifically about the Network+ or CCNA certifications, it as a way to give students interested in these certifications a starting point.