Message from the NoF 2021 Chairs
It is our pleasure to welcome you to the 12th International Conference on Network of the Future (NoF 2021). In spite of being initially held in the beautiful city of Coimbra and hosted by the oldest university in Portugal, NoF 2021 is going to be fully virtual for the second consecutive year, still due to the current Covid-19 pandemic situation around the world.
Since its creation in 2010, NoF has been a premier annual conference that covers advances in the area of Future Internet design, with emphasis on enabling technologies, architectures and services.
In recent years, networks have been witnessing a significant transformation that is resulting in new ways to address the deployment of applications and services in a digital society, today emphasized by the early deployment of 5G networks and services. Major trends like softwarization leveraged by Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Cloud & Edge Computing, as well as the introduction of new radio techniques are shaping the evolution in the Telecom and ICT industries. Additionally, initial research on 6G networks and technologies has already been initiated. Besides technological advances, networking further benefit from the growing introduction of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques that are expected to alleviate complexity while providing smart and reliable network operations.
