The aim of NGC is to allow researchers and practitioners to present the design and implementation techniques for networked group communication. The focus of the workshop is on peer-to-peer, multicast, and networked group communication, ranging from the link layer, through routing, and reliability and traffic control, right up to session and application level control mechanisms. This workshop is the fourth of this international event. The first workshop was in Pisa, Italy, in November 1999; the second was in Stanford, USA, in November 2000; the third was in London, UK, in November 2001.

We wish to distinguish NGC as a forum for novel and creative research projects and discussions on the future of networked group communication in academia and industry. To this end, NGC invites you to submit five-page extended abstracts. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to present at the workshop and publish full-length versions of their papers in the workshop proceedings (8-10 pages on 8x11 paper). Detailed instructions are here. The extended abstract abstract should represent the paper in "short form." Authors should include full references, figures and significant results when available. The submissions will be judged on significance, originality, clarity, relevance, and correctness.

The conference will be held at the Holiday Inn, Brookline in Boston, MA. It will start with two half-day tutorials on October 23, 2002. The technical program will include a keynote and invited talks on October 24-25, 2002. Depending on interest level, and suitable proposed topics, there may also be a panel discussion as well as a poster session. Authors are invited to submit papers on any issue related to networked group communication, including:

• peer-to-peer applications
• applications and services enabled through multicast
• wireless and mobile communication
• multiplayer games
• measurement studies
• content distribution
• network security
• application layer multicast
• economic models
• novel group communication architectures
• routing, naming, address allocation
• group and session management techniques
• QoS and network engineering
• scalability: overheads, stability, analysis, experiments
• adaption and congestion control for group communication
• heterogeneous group communication
• reliable and semi-reliable protocols

Important Dates:

Paper Registration:	May 17, 2002
Paper Submission:	May 24, 2002
Notification:	July 24, 2002
Camera Ready copy:	August 23, 2002 (Forms)/Sept 6 2002 (PDF File)
Conference Dates:	October 23-25, 2002