Networked group communication : third international COST 264 workshop

Thisyear'sInternationalWorkshopon NetworkedGroupCommunications(NGC) was the third event in the NGC series following successful workshops in Pisa, Italy(1999),andStanford,CA,USA(2000). Forthetechnicalprogramthisyear,wereceived40submissionsfromboth academiaandindustrialinstitutionsallaroundtheworld.Foreachpaper,we gatheredat least three (and sometimesas many as?ve) reviews. After a thorough PCmeetingthatwasheldinLondon,14paperswereselectedforpresentation and publication in the workshop proceedings. The program continues the themes ofpreviousyears,rangingfromapplications,throughsecurity,downtogroup management,topologicalconsiderations,andperformance. The program committee worked hard to make sure that the papers were not onlythoroughlyreviewed,butalsothatthe?nalversionswereasuptodateand as accurate as could be managed in the usual circumstances. Thisyear,theworkshopwasheldintheLondonZoo,hostedbyUniversity College London (the tutorials having been held at UCL the day before the start of the paper sessions). The proceedings are published by Springer-Verlag in the LNCS series. There are signs that the scope of the NGC workshopsis broadening to include hot topics such as group communication and content networking. We expect to seemoresubmissionsintheseareas,aswellasothernewtopics,forNGC2002, whichistobeheldattheUniversityofMassachusettsatAmhurst,chairedby Brian Levine and Mostafa Ammar. We hope that the research community will ?nd these proceedings interesting and helpful and that NGC will continue to be an active forum for research on networked group communication and related areas for years to come.