Motivated by the insertion of a communication network in the feedback control loop, this paper focuses on how network-induced data dropouts and variable delays affect the stability of a linear plant with state feedback control. Sufficient conditions for Lyapunov stability are derived in the case of uncertainty due to drops and delays. The verification problem of the sufficient conditions can be directly cast as an LMI feasibility problem. We illustrate the methodology by an example in the cases of drops, delays and drops with delays. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.