This in-depth exploration of applications of combinatorial optimization to communications networks focuses primarily on wireless networks and optical networks, which are the main areas of research of the three editors. Although the book consists of numbered chapters, it is in reality a collection of survey papers. The book takes the approach of allowing the application to drive the discussion, so each chapter introduces a problem in an area of networking, and then subsequently focuses on a technique from combinatorial optimization that is used to attack the problem.

In networking, the book explores such topics as optimal server allocation in wireless networks, multipath routing, allocation policies, quality of service, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) switching networks, topology in both optical and wireless networks, dynamic simulcasting, and failure recovery. All these problems involve improvement objectives such as quality of service, cost, or performance in a network, and thus they lend themselves to a combinatorial optimization approach. Among techniques from combinatorial optimization, we find evolutionary algorithms, pathfinding algorithms, semidefinite programming, stochastic programming, linear programming, and scheduling algorithms.

The book is comprehensive and detailed. It can be somewhat repetitive, since each chapter is self-contained; acronyms and definitions are necessarily repeated. The chapters are well written, however, and feature a wealth of references. The audience for this book would be researchers in the combinatorial optimizations field who are looking to explore applications of familiar techniques. A graduate student looking for a thesis problem would also find the book useful. In this regard, the book could have been improved with the addition of some suggested open problems, but this is a minor issue. The real strength of this book is its inclusiveness and broad range.