Call for Papers

The 9^th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking (APNet’25) will be held in Shanghai, China on August 7-8, 2025. Building on the success of its predecessors, APNet’25 will continue to bring together the very best researchers in computer networking and systems across the Asia-Pacific region and around the globe to a live forum discussing innovative ideas at their early stages. The mission of APNet is that promising but not-yet-mature ideas can receive timely feedback from the community and experienced researchers, leading them into publications at major conferences such as SIGCOMM, NSDI, SOSP, OSDI, EuroSys, MobiCom, and CoNEXT.

We invite submissions of papers (up to 6 pages, excluding references) on a wide range of networking research, including, but not limited to:

Network architectures and algorithms
Cloud and wide-area networking systems & infrastructure
Networking for Machine Learning and Machine Learning for Networking
Operating system support for networking
High-speed networking and applications
Domain-specific networks including datacenter, storage, intra-host networks, etc.
SDN, NFV, and network programming
Networking hardware design and application
Network measurement, monitoring, diagnosis, and operations
Formal methods and network verification
Network security and privacy, censorship, transparency
Network, transport, and application-layer protocols
Resource management, QoS, and signaling
Routing, traffic engineering, switching, and addressing
Wireless, mobile, and sensor networking
Programmable End Host (e.g., eBPF, SmartNics)

The APNet Technical Program Committee will evaluate submissions based on their novelty, significance, and technical merit, rather than completeness. Innovative and well-reasoned ideas supported by preliminary evaluations are sufficient for APNet. We encourage authors to further develop their APNet papers with robust implementations and experiments, aiming for publication in the aforementioned premier conferences.

APC Burden Reduction (ABR) Program

Following recent changes in ACM's publication policies for the International Conference Proceedings Series (ICPS), authors affiliated with institutions that are not part of the ACM Open program (libraries.acm.org/acmopen/open-participants) and do not qualify for a waiver must pay an article processing charge (APC) to publish their ICPS article in the ACM Digital Library.

To help mitigate this financial burden, APNet’25 is introducing the APC Burden Reduction (ABR) Program, which provides registration discount to compensate for the APC cost. Please be advised that the ABR Program benefits are mutually exclusive with travel grant, and cannot be combined with other funding mechanisms from APNet’25.

Eligibility Criteria

Authors may apply for the ABR Program if they meet all of the following conditions:

The paper has been officially accepted as a regular paper at APNet’25.
The corresponding author’s institution is not listed in the ACM Open Participant List.
A formal APC waiver request has been submitted to ACM and rejected.
The paper’s APC invoice from ACM.

Application Process

Eligible authors must provide verification of all four conditions and submit the required documentation via email to senliu@fudan.edu.cn. Upon successful processing of the ABR Program application, a single-use discount code will be issued to authors via email. This unique identifier must be applied during conference registration and cannot be transferred to other researchers.

Information of China’s Visa-Free Policies

We are pleased to announce that many countries are eligible for visa-free entry to Shanghai, making it easier for you to attend the APNet 2025 conference. For the latest information on China’s visa-free travel policies, please refer to the following links:

Important Note to Authors about ACM Open Access Publishing Model

We are pleased to announce that APNET 2025 will participate in the ACM Open initiative, transitioning to a 100% Open Access publishing model starting January 1, 2026. This change aims to enhance the accessibility and impact of research published in the ACM Digital Library. Authors submitting papers to APNET must either be affiliated with an ACM Open institution, pay the applicable Article Processing Charge (APC), or qualify for an automatic or discretionary waiver. Detailed information regarding the Open Access model and associated fees can be found on the ACM website. We encourage authors to review this information carefully to ensure a smooth submission process. For any inquiries, please reach out to acmopen@hq.acm.org.

Submission Instructions

Submissions must be no longer than 6 pages in length including all content except references, formatted in standard ACM two-column conference style with 10-pt font size. Authors should consult the ACM website for the up to date template. Reviewing will be double-blind: no author or affiliation information should appear in the submission. The authors should additionally follow the best practice in order not to disclose their identities implicitly. Papers may present preliminary results but must include novel ideas and differ significantly from previously published work. In line with standard scholarly practices, authors should not have substantially similar work under review elsewhere. However, an extended version of the APNet submission, with a complete implementation and additional experiments, can be submitted simultaneously to another venue. Accepted papers will appear in the proceedings of the workshop, which will be published in the ACM Digital Library.

Submissions can be made online at https://apnet25.hotcrp.com/.

Important dates

Abstract due

March 6, 2025 AoE
Submission due

March 13, 2025 AoE
Notification to authors

April 25, 2025
Camera-ready due

May 16, 2025
Workshop

August 7-8, 2025

Camera-Ready Instructions

Please note any change in title or authorship must be APPROVED BY the PC CHAIRS. This is to ensure that our publication accurately reflects any updates.

The page limit for the final paper is 6 pages, excluding references. For the final paper, please use the official ACM Article template, and make sure to use 9 pt font. Please do NOT use copies of these templates that you might find elsewhere since we cannot be sure that those are compliant.

As described on the above template webpage, the authors should provide proper indexing information in the final version according to the ACM Computing Classification System (CCS). More information about the ACM CCS is available at ACM CCS website.

The authors must insert the correct rights management text and bibliographic strip into the final paper. The ACM will use its automated system to email this information to the authors. Please set your email spam settings to allow messages from "rightsreview@acm.org". For papers that are conditionally accepted with shepherding, the copyright forms will be available after the shepherding outcome.

If you have any questions about the camera-ready process, feel free to contact APNET 2025 publication chair Jinbin Hu.