report on the current status of key management technologies, which motivates the Lucent's activities described in this issue. Finally, we summarize the papers in this issue, which we hope will smooth the way for more advancement in upcoming technologies.
Service and Networking TrendsToday, most service providers still run two parallel networks-one for voice and one for data services. Applications are converging on top of these networks. Intelligent services in the voice network create additional value for service providers. As in the voice network, higher-layer services in the data network influence the lower layers of the network infrastructure.The converged network of the future will be more feature rich than today's network, and it will be driven by the customers' business needs. The so-called "optical communication networks for the next-generation Internet" will provide a client/server relationship among enterprise clients and various applications residing on servers in a number of data centers through a high-capacity heterogeneous network. The network will provide essential applications and services to the clients it supports.This logical separation of the network and services will enable the applications to operate more effectively. It will free them from the constraints of physical topology and allow them to focus on the challenge of meeting service requirements, such as dynamic allocation of resources, easy addition of new