The advancement of key technologies in communication, such as optical and radio transmission, coding schemes, switching mechanisms etc., has meant that communication networks are quickly growing to a larger-scale and higher speed than was ever anticipated. In terms of usage, Internet and real-time ap plications are expected to share a significant portion of the bandwidth in the next-generation of communication networks. Therefore, in order to achieve seamless and Quality of Service (QoS)-guaranteed transmission, regardless of source characteristics, extensive research into networking...