Networking Futures
As more and more devices (workstations, servers, routers) are connected to the Internet, the network address space needs to scale. This is being addressed by the IPv6 protocol.
More devices, together with emerging multimedia applications, imply that the network bandwidth needs to scale. This is being addressed by going from shared to switched media networks and evolving network standards such as gigabit ethernet, OC-12, OC-48 and OC-192 ATM and HIPPI-6400.