chap_1Chapter 1IntroductionThe advent of cheap high-speed global communications ranks as one of the most important developments of human civilization in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1950, an international telephone call was a remarkable event, and black-and-white television was just beginning to become widely available. By 2000, in contrast, an intercontinental phone call could often cost less than a postcard, and downloading large les instantaneously from anywhere in the world had become routine. The eects of this revolution are felt in daily life from Boston to Berlin to Bangalore. Underlying this development has been the replacement of analog by digital communications. Before 1948, digital communications had hardly been imagined. Indeed, Shannon’s 1948 paper [7] may have ……