This text presents late 1990s research on the architecture and protocols for high-speed networks, focusing on communication support for distributed multimedia applications. The book brings together state-of-the-art research from telecommunication and computer communication experts with that of application designers. The analyses of the chapters, which are presented in this book following more or less a bottom-up approach, offer the reader an indication of the actual trends in the field. Most of the results presented in the papers of this book are based on simulation. The text should prove a useful reference for telecommunication and computer experts, QoS-based application designers, as well as for graduate students in these fields. The 151 references that supplement the chapters pave the way to access the basic results and related works.