Welcome to the 2000 Summer Computer Simulation Conference (SCSC 2000), your portal to the Modeling and Simulation Industry of the 21 st Century! The theme for this year?s conference is: ?MAINSTREAM Simulation – SCSC 2000 addresses the MAINSTREAM of simulation...in the MAINSTREAM of world-wide business, government, and education.?

The simulation industry is changing rapidly in response to economic imperatives and technological opportunity. Fueled by economic pressure, simulation is becoming pervasive in public and private enteprise. Facilitated by emerging standards and infrastructure, the long-awaited simulation intervisibility, interoperability, and re-use among heretofore segmented simulation markets are becoming practical. Simulation application domains that have been insular and specialized are beginning to share concepts, practices, and assets at an accelerating pace.

The SCSC 2000 meeting emphasizes topics of synoptic interest to the entire modeling and simulation community. Papers and panelists from a wide range of application domains were solicited. Consequent participation by diverse simulation communities is expected to heighten awareness at the meeting of the significant similarities that characterize modeling and simulation technology and practice within the industry. By sampling generously across the industry, we expect to discover those topics which are most generally important and which best admit to inter-domain collaboration.

A full program of activities is planned for the SCSC 2000. Invited Speakers provide senior executives? views of the evolving simulation landscape. Paper Sessions report practitioners? progress in addressing issues of general concern. Panels provide cross-domain review of selected issues. Workshop Sessions provide a structured, moderated venue for the collegial investigation of topics admitting to subsequent ACTION. And Exhibits afford vendors and users of simulation products and services the opportunity to demonstrate their wares and capabilities.

As SCSC 2000 participants, I encourage you to discover and invent for yourselves the trends that will dominate the evolution of the 21 st Century Simulation Industry!

Welcome to the 2000 Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems, SPECTS 2000. As we move into the new millennium, SPECTS continues its mission as a premier international conference focusing on the research and practice of performance evaluation of computer and telecommunication systems.

SPECTS 2000 offers a unique forum for researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government to share their expertise, results and achievements in all areas of performance evaluation of computer and telecommunications systems, including simulation, analytic modeling and measurements

The theme of this year?s conference,? Performance evaluation is vital for efficient system design in the next millennium,? reflects the importance of this discipline in the new millennium where computer and telecommunication systems and their applications are becoming more and more complex, and globally widespread.

The program consists of two parallel tracks per day and will last for three days. Each track has three sessions. The topics covered in the program include ATM systems, high-speed networks, high-performance computing/computers, memory systems, Internet, wireless communications, parallel and distributed systems, computer architecture, queues, TCP/IP systems, fault-tolerant systems, authentication, parallel and distributed simulation, QoS, routing, flow control, client–server systems, GSM, load balancing, multimedia, and Web-based applications. We received a large number of high quality papers this year. We accepted only the very highest. We have two categories of accepted papers, regular papers and short papers. Regular papers were allowed a maximum of eight printed pages, while short papers were allocated a maximum of five printed pages.

Finally, on behalf of the Executive and Steering Committees of SPECTS 2000, and the Society for Computer Simulation International, I invite all of you to enjoy the conference and the gorgeous July weather of Vancouver.