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).