This book describes recent research and development in the area of Internet signaling, including architecture, protocols and practices for applications of IP-based networks that require any type of signaling functions. The text explains the principles and concepts of a generic IP signaling architecture.  It discusses the design of protocols both for generic transport of signaling application data over IP networks and for performing the actual application-specific functionalities upon the generic transport services. Readers will benefit from the practical experiences of the authors on the design and development of first implementations as well as performance and scalability studies.