HotNets 2025: Call for Papers

The Twenty-Fourth ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets 2025) will be held from November 17-18, 2025, in College Park, Maryland, USA.

Overview

HotNets 2025 aims to bring together researchers in computer networks and systems for a lively debate on the theory and practice of networking. It provides a venue for discussing innovative ideas and debating future research agendas in the field.

Submission Invitation

We invite researchers and practitioners to submit short position papers. Submissions are encouraged to identify fundamental open questions, advocate for new approaches, offer constructive critiques of the state of networking research, re-frame or debunk existing work, report unexpected early results from a deployment, present promising but unproven ideas, or propose new evaluation methods. Well-reasoned arguments or preliminary evaluations are considered sufficient support for the possibility of the paper's claims.

HotNets seeks interesting ideas over incremental, well-baked systems, favoring early work and papers likely to stimulate reflection and discussion.

Topics of Interest

HotNets takes a broad view of networking research, including (but not limited to):

• Mobile, wide-area, data-center, home, and enterprise networks.
• Link technologies (wired, wireless, optical, visual, acoustic).
• Social networks and network architecture.
• Packet-processing and transmission hardware and software.
• Virtualization, mobility, provisioning and resource management.
• Performance, energy consumption, sustainability, topology, robustness.
• Measurement, diagnosis, verification, privacy, security, economics and evolution.
• Theory, usability, machine learning, and interactions with applications.

Submission and Formatting Guidelines

• Submission Deadline: July 9, 2025 (23:59 AoE)
• Author Notification: September 19, 2025
• Format: Two-column ACM proceedings format.
• Length: No more than 6 pages, excluding references. References have no page limit, but appendices are not allowed.
• Content: Papers must contain novel ideas and differ significantly in content from previously published papers.
• Anonymity: All submissions must be blind (no author names or affiliations indicated).
• File Format: Electronic submissions in PDF only.
• Language: English.
• Template: Use the provided LaTeX class file: hotnets25-template.zip. Ensure correct margins and settings as specified in the template.
  • First two lines of the LaTeX document should be:

    \documentclass[sigconf, 10pt, anonymous, nonacm]{acmart}
    \settopmatter{printfolios=true, printccs=false, printacmref=false}
    

• Citations: Numeric style (e.g., [52]).
• Submission Portal: Submit papers on HotCRP.

Policy on Concurrent Submissions

Concurrent submissions to HotNets 2025 and any other peer-reviewed venue covering the same work are prohibited. Authors with questions about this policy should contact the PC co-chairs before submitting.

Ethical Concerns

Authors must attest that their work complies with all applicable ethical standards. The PC may have its own discussion of the ethics of the work and authors agree to be available to respond to queries from the PC chairs.

Workshop Participation

Attendance is limited to approximately 90 people in person to facilitate discussion. In-person invitations will be allocated first to authors of accepted papers, organizers, committee members, and sponsors. Paper presentations must be in-person. A limited number of open registration slots will be available.

Sponsorship

Sponsored by ACM SIGCOMM.