ALEX BACHMUTSKY has broad experience of almost 30 years in various areas of software development, software, hardware and system architecture, technology selection and evaluation, including wireless infrastructure, security, packet processing technologies, pattern recognition, networking, high availability and multimedia. At Nokia and later at Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Alex has been a Chief Architect for state-of-the-art high performance telecommunication gateways, from multi-chassis and multi-blade systems to pizza-box type devices integrating the latest available packet processing and system architectures. As a part of the Research and Technology Platform organization at NSN, he is continuously scouting for the newest and most promising hardware and software technologies, while actively influencing the next generation development of components and sub-systems in the area of high performance and highly scalable carrier grade data and control plane processing. The knowledge collected during this technology intelligence and evaluation work, together with extensive system design experience, became a foundation for this book.