- agement objective is to manage the network as an application-enabling infrastruc- ture, with flexibility being more important than cost. The new network architecture consists of converged voice/data applications and transport, with most traffic des- tined for remote servers. Given the increasing emphasis on data and multimedia, data network availability is today the key consideration. Network optimization, how- ever, is more challenging and can be said to be nondeterministic due to unpredictable traffic, changing service providers, and changing pricing. When it comes to network infrastructure, the preference is for utilization of public networks and outsourcing, relying on private networks only where necessary. In the mind of the new-era service provider, voice, data, and video in con- verged networks are all just bits-they are all the same thing to service providers and regulators alike. However, although regulatory changes are indicated, they have yet to be fully articulated and instituted. The revenue stream is seen to come primarily from data and advanced applications involving multimedia. Voice is likely to move to wireless or may become "free," as part of IP service. With the Chapter 10 Next-Generation Networks focus shifting to data, the main network concern is to optimize the infrastructure for IP traffic. Traffic engineering in the current environment is governed by philosophy that providing bandwidth is easy but controlling QoS is much more difficult, with the need to provide various levels of service designed to control latencies, losses, and bandwidth allocation. In terms of bandwidth, optical band- width has been driving down the cost and price of long-haul WAN transport. Lots of bandwidth, made available through optical technologies such as DWDM, beats the complexity of QoS-based service levels. Many of today's strategies therefore involve throwing bandwidth at the problem. However, QoS is increasingly empha- sized as one of the main objectives behind building next-generation networks. When it com