For an increasing number of businesses, DS1 carrier circuits operating at 1.54 Mbps have been replaced by DS3s operating at 45 Mbps. For end-users, cable modems and DSL in all its flavors have enabled many to throw away their 56 Kbps modems and enjoy download speeds at home increased by more than a full order of magnitude. This additional bandwidth has enabled new applications for Internet technology to reach the masses.
Graphical content embedded within Web pages continues to grow richer.
Unfortunately, this fundamental and haphazard interplay of competing growth motivations has cripped the Internet since its inception. New technologies have always been stifled by the lack of available bandwidth, and additional bandwidth has always spurred the drive to deliver the next generation of content delivery. Public peering points expedited the delivery of Internet traffic destined to cross multiple ISPs. Private peering arrangements serving only the needs of equally-sized ISPs became the normal state of affairs, and smaller ISPs soon found themselves unwelcome to peer with their larger cousins without offering financial compensation. Skilled engineers at ISPs with any measureable traffic began shunting packets destined for backbones other than their own like proverbial hot potatoes.