The liberalization of the Indian economy facilitated the entry of new players in the market along with higher Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) influx and created a huge employment basket. However there was a major knowledge gap vis-a-vis the formal education imparted in engineering colleges and the needs of the industry. This was pronounced by the rapid technological developments in the fields of semiconductor engineering, fiber optic technology as well as computer networks, broadband and telecommunication engineering. Thus most of the telecom technicians/engineers learned the tricks-of-the-trade on the job itself. As a result many of these technicians/engineers as well as managers knew ‘how’ to tackle a problem, but not necessarily ‘why’. Most of the books available in the market provide a mathematical treatise on the subject thus alienating it from the masses. In addition there is no single book that provides the conceptual framework as well as the latest technology offerings in the area of ‘core, ‘backbone’ networks, more commonly referred to as transport networks, and their integration with data networks. This book provides a systematic progression from the legacy networks of the past to the Next Generation Convergent networks of the future. The books aims at providing complete background and relevant details that are required to plan, design and deploy modern day core/backbone telecommunication networks. This is book would be useful to individuals associated with most of the areas of the vast telecom as well as data networking spectrum including planning, engineering, network management & operations, installation and commissioning as well as operations and maintenance, besides any knowledge seeker.