The workshop series on Real Overlays And Distributed Systems (ROADS) focuses on bringing together regional people who are (interested in) exploring the new challenges of building overlay networks and distributed networked systems. From a technical perspective, the ROADS workshop is a place to share new ideas, experiences, and work in progress. From a social point of view, one goal of ROADS is to nurture important face-to-face interaction among researchers working on Real Overlays And Distributed Systems builders. In particular, the workshop series primary goal is to bring together researcher from the United States who are building novel new ROADS with those in outside of the USA.

The Real in ROADS refers to systems that are designed to run on a real platform for a period of time. Such systems might be research projects, teaching exercises, or more permanent services, but they should address technical issues of actual overlays and distributed systems. ROADS' emphasis will be on overlays and distributed systems that are--intended to be--spread over a large number of sites (e.g., PlanetLab, OurGrid, P2P).