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Due to the current Covid situation in Europe, NoF 2021 will run as a full virtual conference
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Message from the NoF 2021 Chairs

It is our pleasure to welcome you to the 12^th International Conference on Network of the Future (NoF 2021). In spite of being initially held in the beautiful city of Coimbra and hosted by the oldest university in Portugal, NoF 2021 is going to be fully virtual for the second consecutive year, still due to the current Covid-19 pandemic situation around the world.

Since its creation in 2010, NoF has been a premier annual conference that covers advances in the area of Future Internet design, with emphasis on enabling technologies, architectures and services.

In recent years, networks have been witnessing a significant transformation that is resulting in new ways to address the deployment of applications and services in a digital society, today emphasized by the early deployment of 5G networks and services. Major trends like softwarization leveraged by Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Cloud & Edge Computing, as well as the introduction of new radio techniques are shaping the evolution in the Telecom and ICT industries. Additionally, initial research on 6G networks and technologies has already been initiated. Besides technological advances, networking further benefit from the growing introduction of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques that are expected to alleviate complexity while providing smart and reliable network operations.

NoF 2021 will accommodate an attractive technical program that features:

Three Keynotes

• Research trends in network infrastructure, security, and management, by Raouf Boutaba (University of Waterloo, Canada)
• The application of AI to networks, by Dinesh C. Verma and Utpal Mangla (IBM, USA)
• The Coherent (R)evolution: Faster, Longer, and Soon (Almost) Everywhere?, by João Pedro (Infinera, Portugal)

Panel

• Rationalizing Edge Computing in the New Era of Beyond 5G

With Stuart Clayman (UCL, UK), Leonardo Goratti (Safran, Germany), Marco Ruffini (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), Roberto Riggio (Polytechnic University of Marche, Italy), and Elaine Wong (University of Melbourne, Australia)

Tutorial

• Network automation: challenges, enablers, and benefits, by Paolo Monti and Carlos Natalino (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden)

Six Technical Sessions and one Demo Session

Additionally, a half-day Workshop (ResNeD), dedicated to network resilience issues, will include 3 keynote Talks:

• New Challenges and Solutions to Network Resilience: A Practical Approach, by Jorge Carapinha (Altice Labs, Portugal)
• Designing and Operating Content Aggregation & Content Delivery Networks in scenarios of high availability and high resilience – A Broadcasting perspective of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games, by Mario Reis (Olympic Broadcasting Services, Spain) 
• Towards Structural Resilience of Next Generation Cellular Networks, by David Tipper (University of Pittsburgh, USA)

NoF 2021 is technically sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society and organized by DNAC. The initial support by the University of Coimbra and INESC Coimbra is greatly acknowledged. We are indebted to the members of the Organizing Committee who helped us preparing an excellent program involving international leading experts. We duly thank all authors who submitted their research work to the conference as well as the international experts who provided high-quality reviews, allowing us to select the best technical contributions. We wish that all attendees of NoF 2021 will benefit from very fruitful discussions and excellent presentations of innovative research ideas, and we are looking forward to an engaging scientific event.

Carmen Mas Machuca
(Technical University of Munich, Germany)

Lúcia Martins
(University of Coimbra & INESC Coimbra, Portugal)

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Tim Wauters
(Ghent University & imec, Belgium)

Susana Sargento
(University of Aveiro, Portugal)

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Prosper Chemouil
(CNAM, France (Chair))