_applied sciences_  
_Editorial_  
Special Issue: Novel Algorithms and Protocols for Networks  
**[PERSON] \({}^{1,\star}\)\({}^{\copyright}\)**, [PERSON] \({}^{2,\star}\)\({}^{\copyright}\) and [PERSON] \({}^{3,\star}\)  
\({}^{1}\) Department of Computer Architecture, Technical University of Catalonia--BarcelonaTech (UPC),  
08034 Barcelona, Spain  
\({}^{2}\) National Institute of Telecommunications, 1 Szachowa Street, 04-894 Warsaw, Poland  
\({}^{3}\) Department of Computer Science, University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, SA, Italy  
\({}^{\star}\) Correspondence: [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (D.C.); [PERSON]SS] (M.K. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (F.P.) Today, applications can be instantiated in a number of data centers located in different segments of the network, from the core to the edge. Users accessing these applications have stringent requirements in terms of the latency, reliability, mobility, and security. Therefore, application orchestration frameworks must be agile enough to deploy different instances of applications in multiple locations in real-time, following the requirements and sometimes the location of users. From this perspective, new critical enabling technologies have recently arisen, such as the recent introduction of softwarization and virtualization at different levels of the network segments. In such a new panorama, the network must be highly dynamic; support multihoming and high user mobility rates; provide a low latency; and secure access, versatility, and automation. Consequently, the development of novel strategies, algorithms, and protocols is fundamental to reaching the required optimization of the overall system performance. This special issue on the \"Novel Algorithms and Protocols for Networks\" brings together the latest proposals and results of algorithms and protocols employed to guarantee the required level of performance and Quality of Service (QoS) by the upcoming applications envisioned in this 5G era. In response to the Call for Papers, 17 articles were submitted to this special issue, and 11 were accepted for publication. In the following paragraphs, a summary of these papers, including their most relevant contributions, is presented. In the first paper included in this issue, [PERSON] et al. [1] focus on vulnerability management and assessment. It is reported that a large delay preceding the elimination of a critical vulnerability presents a significant risk to the network security and increases the probability of sustained damage in corporate networks. The authors present their solution, which is called the Vulnerability Management Centre (VMC). This is a distributed system that performs automatic calculations of the vulnerability score vector by combining the data obtained from a vulnerability scanner with the data retrieved from an organizational inventory database. The obtained results show that the developed VMC is capable of presenting results to stakeholders--almost in real-time--thus accelerating the process of vulnerability identification and prioritization, helping to reduce the probability of a successful cyberattack. [PERSON] et al. [2] deal with the problem of fairly allocating the network resources among the Virtual Data Centers (VDCs) in multi-tenant cloud data centers. This a well-known problem and many researchers are proposing different strategies to guarantee a minimum bandwidth, work-conservation, and congestion control across VDCs while optimizing the use of the overall data center resources. In this paper, the authors present their novel architecture, which is called NXT-Freedom. The reported results of a prototype show that the proposed NXT-Freedom can achieve a fair network bandwidth across tenants in a flexible and efficient manner, while providing work-conserving allocations with minimum bandwidth demands. As previously stated, the deployment of 5G will lead to a revolutionary transformation of telecommunication networks.