written by a highly regarded author and expert in the field (with a background in communications and computer systems) this text is aimed towards the advanced undergraduate/graduate level. despite numerous titles written about this subject, there are few publications that offer students and networking engineers a complete overview of connection-oriented networks. perros ` approach is to lay down the foundations in the first chapter by discussing history and development as well as defining the terminology. then he progresses to all appropriate aspects related to connection-oriented networks as signaling, architecture, transmission and standards of sonet, packet-switched computer networks, optical networks, access networks and voice over atm and multi-protocol label switching (mpls).