The PROCON Best Paper Award recognizes outstanding research contributions in the field of cloud network programmability, software-defined infrastructure, and intelligent edge-to-cloud systems. The award is presented annually at the International Workshop on Programmability for Cloud Networks and Applications, held in conjunction with the International Teletraffic Congress (ITC).
The PROCON Best Paper Award was established to celebrate and encourage high-impact research in the rapidly evolving domain of programmable cloud networks. As cloud infrastructures grow in scale and complexity — spanning centralized data centers, regional points of presence, and geographically distributed edge nodes — the need for intelligent, programmable, and automated approaches to network management and application delivery has become paramount.
PROCON is held in conjunction with the International Teletraffic Congress (ITC), the first international conference in networking science and practice. Founded in 1955, ITC has a 70-year legacy of advancing the theory and practice of communication network performance, modeling, and design. Technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society, ITC brings together researchers from industry, network operators, and academia — the three traditional pillars of the networking community.
The Best Paper Award is determined through a rigorous multi-stage process led by the Technical Program Committee (TPC):
Papers are assessed against four primary criteria:
Does the paper present a novel contribution to cloud network programmability? Does it introduce new concepts, models, or methodologies that advance the state of the art?
Is the methodology sound and rigorous? Are the results validated through appropriate analytical, simulation, or experimental techniques — ideally using production-scale data?
Does the work address a real operational challenge in cloud network environments? What is its potential to influence practical deployments or industry practices?
Is the paper well-structured and clearly written? Does it effectively communicate its contributions and findings to both academic and industry audiences?
The PROCON Best Paper Award occupies a unique position at the intersection of academic research and industrial practice. By focusing on programmability for cloud networks and applications, the award recognizes work that bridges the gap between theoretical advances in software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and machine learning, and their practical application in operational cloud and edge infrastructure.
Winning papers are recognized for their potential to influence both future research directions and real-world network deployments — from CDN optimization and edge computing to 5G/6G network slicing and AI-driven network operations.
PROCON is held in conjunction with the International Teletraffic Congress (ITC), which was founded in 1955 and is technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society. ITC is recognized as the first international conference in networking science and practice, with a continuous publication record spanning seven decades. All PROCON proceedings inherit ITC's publication standards and indexing. For more information, visit the ITC official website or the ITC Affiliation page.