The main objectives of COST Action 272 were to contribute to the identification of key requirements, analysis, performance comparison, architectural design, and protocol specification of future packet-oriented satellite communication systems, with a clear focus on Internet-type system concepts, applications, and protocols/techniques on the various layers. The work within the Action focused on satellite-specific market segments and potential at an early stage and came up with a clearly defined set of reference scenarios (global/regional, EO/non-GEO, broadcast/ multicast/interactive, QoS/best-effort, all-IP/hybrid, …). Additional benefits of setting up the proposed research activities within the COST framework were met because of multidisciplinary character of research in various areas such as traffic characterization and modelling, satellite communications, etc. The strategic theme of COST 272 allowed researchers of 11 European countries to concentrate on the domain, and to obtain results in the difficult area of cross-layer interoperability. Some new interesting approaches were led in the fields of cross-layer technologies, global platform, global scalable traffic modelling, and routing, such as: * Identification of technologies supporting IP over satellites and enabling new services and QoS guarantees; * Study of suitability to implement IP switching in the sky; * Adaptation of protocols and algorithms initially developed for the fixed and mobile terrestrial networks, to make them suitable for the use in satellite segment; * Development of new algorithms, designed deliberately for the satellite segment; * Evaluation of the suitability of using various optical technologies in the space segment. COST 272 was the crossroads of many active people in the satellite networking area. It was the place for many instructive presentations that have contributed to distribute the acquired knowledge to the different actors. This cooperation delivered major improvements to the modelling of satellite traffic flows, inter-satellite link networking, and efficient resource management. Much work in the field was carried out within COST 272 and its predecessor Actions, and this was very valuable preparation for setting up SatNEx, which is now a Network of Excellence for the field of satellite communication in FP6.
