It is easy to find a book that deals with a particular contemporary communication technology, like Internet protocol with multiprotocol label switching (IP/MPLS), but it is very hard to find how services in such an environment can be automatically provisioned, along with the requested quality level, from a practical perspective. This up-to-date book fulfills this need, and will be most appreciated by practitioners and engineers interested in deploying MPLS-based services in enterprises.

The book is composed of two parts. The first contains seven chapters presenting architectures and protocols relevant to dynamic provisioning of services. Part 2, containing five chapters, covers applications and examples. The book is supplemented with five appendices on Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema related to netconfig services, examples of IP traffic engineering policy information bases, and an information model for IP-based virtual private networks, as well as an index.

After the introductory chapter, chapter 2 explains basic concepts related to policy-based management. Chapter 3 presents a no-longer-used authentication, authorization, and reporting protocol--remote authentication dial-in user service (RADIUS). Then, the newer protocol of this type--the Diameter protocol--is discussed. Its use in the context of next-generation networks is also addressed. Chapter 5 details the common open policy service (COPS) protocol, used for resource admission control policy enforcement. The subsequent chapter introduces NETCONF, one of the novel network management protocols. The protocols presented so far evolved mainly for fixed networks; chapter 7 is devoted to the control and provisioning of wireless access points (CAPWAP) protocol, especially suitable for wireless local networks.

Chapter 8, beginning Part 2, introduces the idea of quality of service (QoS) policing. The next chapter extends those concepts, focusing mainly on traffic engineering policy enforcement with the use of COPS. Chapter 10 examines dynamic provisioning of virtual private networks based on border gateway protocol with MPLS, while chapter 11 reports automated enforcement of security policies in IP/MPLS. The last chapter emphasizes problems that should be solved by researchers to enable successful and seamless automated provisioning of services in the next-generation networks.

To add to the recommended audience from the beginning of the review, the book is also appropriate for beginners, as the presentation starts from scratch and with the simplest ideas. Thus, information technology graduate students can also use this book.