COST-257 Final Report

Preface This synopsis outlines the results of the COST-257 project, prepared for the final seminar to take place in Würzburg, Germany from 27.– 29.9.2000. COST belongs to a framework programme initiated by the Euro-pean Union and stands for " Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research " of EU, Central and Eastern European countries as well as of institutions from non-COST member states. This series of projects was created in 1970, together with negotiations on common European research and development programmes, which led to the setting-up of well-known programmes such as ESPRIT, EUREKA, RACE and IST. The COST-257 action can be seen as a follow-on project from ¯ COST-201 on " Methods for planning and optimization of telecommunications networks " (1979-1983), ¯ COST-214 on " Methods for the design and evaluation of multi-service telecommunication networks " (1985-1988), ¯ COST-224 on " Methods for the performance evaluation and design of asynchronous and synchronous multiservice networks " (1988-1991), ¯ COST-242 on " Methods for the performance evaluation and design of multiservice broadband networks " (1992-1996). iv COST-257 entitled " Impacts of new services on the architecture and performance of broadband networks " was inaugurated in Novem-ber 1996. The participating scientific community has grown remarkably during the course of the project. The initial number of participating countries was 12 and grew to 19 in the year 2000. The following countries and institutes participated: Besides the technical achievements, evidenced by more than 200 technical documents with a publication score of about 1 in 2, the personal networking established on Management Committee meetings contributes significantly to the value of COST actions. Management Committee members and experts having participated regularly (min. 3 times) in the project are as follows: The project period of four years witnessed a dramatic change in network technology and emerging applications. At the beginning of the project, ATM was the dominating technology. The number of ATM-related Technical Documents, both from performance analysis and network dimensioning issues, reflected this common view. During the project, IP-oriented network structures and applications gradually lessened the importance of ATM. In addition the emerging wireless networks in conjunction with their performance issues assumed also a large share of the projects core. Looking at the technology shift one can vi observe that it is increasingly difficult to define the scope of a four-year research project such as COST-257. On the other hand, considering the number of IP-related …