This book provides a representative collection of chapters that discuss these
emerging technologies and their application in optical communication networks to
transport current and emerging IP traffic. They approach the state of the art of
several critical applications for next-generation communication networks to support
the increasing rates of increasingly heterogeneous traffic. It addresses the challenging need to promote the understanding of the state of the art as it evolves, thus filling a critical gap between the classical textbook that normally discusses mature, steady technologies and the short paper that discusses a specific contribution to the state of the art, which is assumed to be known by the reader. I therefore congratulate
the editors and authors for this worthy editorial endeavor.