Abstract

The first person I want to thank for literally dragging me this far is my advisor Giuseppe Di Battista, to whom I owe probably everything I know about computer networks. Besides being a great teacher and a helpful advisor, his key contribution throughout my PhD training was enthusiasm for reasearch. All the people at the Computer Networks Research Lab of Roma Tre Uni-versity gave a crucial contribution to my PhD in some way. Fabrizio Frati and Patrizio Angelini were so friendly to me that they even managed to have me do some work in the research area of Graph Drawing. Tiziana Refice helped me get started, both from an academic and from a professional point of view. Bernardo Palazzi and Pier Francesco Cortese helped bringing fun in the lab and making it an ideal workplace. Massimo Rimondini, known for his tremendous typing speed and his unsurpassed technical skills, was a continuous spur to im-prove myself. I owe to Maurizio Pizzonia and Maurizio “Titto ” Patrignani a lot of stimulating discussions, ranging from pure graph theory to applied computer networks. I especially want to thank Stefano Vissicchio for his perseverance: I