What Metcalfe had in mind was the insidious bug that would infect the whole system in one fell swoop. This bug could hide in the Domain Name System software that carries out all the routing on the network, which relies on a series of address tables maintained by routers that automatically inform each other of changes in topography. Metcalfe announced that this sort of blockage could well occur on a larger scale and operators would be unable to control or fix the problem. The result could then be the overall collapse of the system. Of course, this collapse never happened.
Statistics show that the time required for pinging decreases steadily each year.
This said, just because packets now circulate more quickly along the backbone, it does not mean we have achieved perfection. As we have just seen, complex applications such as video on demand require, above all, a high quality of services. The PC has been the main vector for Internet access for years now, but it seems that nobody is willing to settle for this state of affairs. It is true that to bring the Internet to the populace, the PC is clearly not the ideal medium - it is too complicated and too fragile. The Hilton hotel, located just next to Groupe SQLI's agency in Lyons, France, offers Internet access in its rooms.