I'd just waited what seemed like forever as an immense file downloaded to one of our computers. During the wait, I'd suggested that the network infrastructure vendors were secretly working with application vendors to create bloat so that IT managers would have to buy faster hubs, switches and routers. But the infrastructure vendors aren't to blame.
Cisco suffers along with everyone else when dealing with larger and larger applications.
The files that an application needs to run continue to get bigger. The reasons are simple enough. Users demand more features and flash, and those features require more program code that takes up more space. Meantime, developers can rarely afford to pay their staffs to optimize the applications they write, so apps typically contain tens of thousands of lines of unnecessary code. After all, computers and networks have reached speeds that a few years ago were unimaginable.