5G is being deployed and B5G connectivity is under study and standardization. Benefits brought by the 5G/B5G air interface are numerous and 5G is more than just an evolution of radio technology since it consists of innovative concepts: the application of network softwarization and programmability paradigms to the overall network design, the reduced latency promised by edge computing, or the concept of network slicing. These innovations open the door to new vertical-specific services, even capable of saving more lives. The paper describes four use cases to demonstrate the large-scale trialing of the B5G technology specifically devoted to eHealth and Emergency domains, by supporting the B5G applications in large-scale environments (e.g., hospitals) and bringing novel applications (e.g., Remote Proctoring and Smart Ambulance) and on societal benefits in eHealth and Emergency areas through the development of innovative B5G/6G applications. The work is a part of a more complete behavior, TrialsNet project, within SNS JU European Commission Programme, considering other field of application of B5G connectivity.

In addition to CPRI, new functional splits have been defined in 5G creating diverse fronthaul transport bandwidth and latency requirements. These fronthaul requirements shall be fulfilled simultaneously together with the backhaul requirements by an integrated fronthaul and backhaul transport solution. In this paper, we analyze the technical challenges to achieve an integrated transport solution in 5G and propose specific solutions to address these challenges. These solutions have been implemented and verified with pre-commercial equipment. Our results confirm that an integrated fronthaul and backhaul transport dubbed Crosshaul can meet all the requirements of 5G fronthaul and backhaul in a cost-efficient manner.

Next-generation network infrastructure should support different services and several levels of quality of service (QoS) and resilience. The main requirements for such multiservice networks are flexibility, effective utilization of network resources, and ability to react to traffic demand changes with time. These requisites lead to the fact that next-generation networks should, to some extend, be "self-adapting," to cope with the need of promptly reacting to traffic demand changes, in an effective way, while taking into account the different requirements in terms of QoS. This paper sketches the reference network scenario and discusses the subject of self-adapting networks, attempting to focus on the key issues that need to be solved to realize future infrastructures. As a relevant example, this paper briefly reports a system developed by the authors' laboratory that implements a traffic engineering solution able to fulfill the mentioned requirements. This system could be regarded as a first concrete step toward the realization of self-adapting networks. In addition, some relevant results that were obtained either by simulation or by experiments on a real test bed are reported to discuss the main characteristics of such a system and assess the feasibility of the concept. Finally, the paper reviews the main hot issues that need to be addressed, in the authors' opinion, by the international research community.

This paper presents an integrated traffic engineering (TE) system for new generation multilayer networks based on the generalized multiprotocol label switching (GMPLS) paradigm, and reports the performance analysis of such a system. The proposed TE system aims at dynamically reacting to traffic changes and, at the same time, fulfilling quality of service (QoS) requirements for different classes of service. The proposed solution consists of a hybrid routing approach and a bandwidth management strategy. The former makes use of both off-line and on-line methods to accommodate traffic requests. The latter, based on an "elastic" use of the bandwidth, allows the handling of different priorities among data flows, possible preemptions, and rerouting. The proposed TE permits the accommodation of the largest amount of traffic, while guaranteeing good performance to mission-critical services. The main building blocks and the operations of the system are reported and the major advantages are discussed. The performance of the proposed system are compared with the ones relating to a reasonable alternative system based on overprovisioning, to highlight its advantages of in terms of traffic volume that can be accommodated for a given network infrastructure.