Book excerpt: A highly accessible reference offering a broad range of topics and insights on large scale network-centric distributed systems Evolving from the fields of high-performance computing and networking, large scale network-centric distributed systems continues to grow as one of the most important topics in computing and communication and many interdisciplinary areas. Dealing with both wired and wireless networks, this book focuses on the design and performance issues of such systems. Large Scale Network-Centric Distributed Systems provides in-depth coverage ranging from ground-level hardware issues (such as buffer organization, router delay, and flow control) to the high-level issues immediately concerning application or system users (including parallel programming, middleware, and OS support for such computing systems). Arranged in five parts, it explains and analyzes complex topics to an unprecedented degree: Part 1: Multicore and Many-Core (Mc) Systems-on-Chip Part 2: Pervasive/Ubiquitous Computing and Peer-to-Peer Systems Part 3: Wireless/Mobile Networks Part 4: Grid and Cloud Computing Part 5: Other Topics Related to Network-Centric Computing and Its Applications Large Scale Network-Centric Distributed Systems is an incredibly useful resource for practitioners, postgraduate students, postdocs, and researchers.