The exponential growth of the Internet. Increasing use of higher bandwidth applications. Increase in telecommuters. Increase in use for business communication.
Conflicting views exist regarding the short term future of the Internet.
There is growing concern about the possibility of a large scale collapse . On the other hand some telecommunications observers feel that there is a great deal of spare capacity owned by the telecoms companies and an airlines style price war is imminent . The potential rewards are high and many companies , traditionally outside telecommunications are looking at how they can join the race . One approach to increasing bandwidth involves the use of sophisticated caching schemes . These can increase the apparent response of a network, but also increase the complexity of the congestion problem.