As the private and public sectors adopt management and control strategies, which demand military-like responsiveness from the Internet, they too are complaining about traffic jams and breakdown caused by inadequate capacity. This is a minority view and not borne out by analysis or experience. Rickard lays the blame for congestion on conditions that would not surprise an experienced military communicator, such as undersized web servers, the misreading of consumer demands, a wasteful hierarchical network topology and the lack of financial incentives to set reasonable prices for the higher speed access line technologies. The solutions are readily available and, in many cases, involve low-technology approaches. Unlike the physical modes of transportation, information superhighway travelers follow no rules of behavior and little more than self-imposed discipline.
Anarchy is worshipped by some.
A less hierarchical network topology could more directly connect the 3,000-plus Internet service providers and markedly reduce occasional congestion. This ambitious social goal, when coupled with the 1996 Telecommunications Act, has unleashed as many as five competing technologies for the right to carry information down that last mile. But here again, the selection will turn on factors having little to do with technical merits of the competing technologies of wire, cable, glass, satellite and wireless. The last mile never has been inexpensive, but in the telephony age, subsidies levied on a monopoly financed the connection. This medium is less expensive only in the sense that it reduces capital outlays.