High-performance, high-capacity packet switches and routers in the metro and backbone network are a basic infrastructure requirement to support the Future Internet. Trends in traffic evolution are higher traffic volumes and increasingly unpredictable variations caused by the mobility of heavy multimedia flows. These tendencies translate into challenges to the switching and routing in the aggregation and core networks. Original and survey papers are invited for a special issue on the design of highperformance switching and routing systems to address these challenges, including architectural, planning, traffic engineering and algorithmic aspects of electronic and optical high-speed networks.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

- High-performance switch and router architectures.
- Impairment-aware optical switching fabrics. Optical switch fabrics for electronic packet switching.
- Interconnection networks.
- Packet classification and scheduling. Deep packet inspection.
- High-speed packet processors.
- Address look-up algorithms.
- Switching in data-centers.
- Optical Circuit/Packet/Burst Switching.
- Power-aware switching and routing.
- Protection and recovery.
- QoS, traffic engineering and control.
- Network monitoring, management and operation.
- Cross layer optimization in switching and routing.
- Multicast/anycast switching and routing.
- Routing and signaling protocols.
- Security in high-speed aggregation and backbone networks.
- Clean-slate design for the Internet.