In this research, networking issues arising in communications systems and parallel processing will be studied within a unified framework encompassing several diverse technologies. The goal is the consolidation of basic networking principles and techniques, and the development of a systematic methodology, leading to a deeper understanding of the structural and analytical aspects of networking and supporting innovative technologies. Under the networking umbrella, several relevant issues are considered, including process scheduling and resource sharing, coordination and protocol science, structural and analytical modeling and optimization of discrete event dynamics and asynchronous algorithmic implementations. Motivation for this research is drawn from variety of modern technological areas, including high-speed communication networks and service integration, radio networks and personal communications, parallel and distributed computation, flexible manufacturing systems. Quite different in several respects indeed, these technologies share certain key structural features related to networking and parallelism. They also provide the natural applications for this research where there is strong potential for important technological innovations.
