7. Future technologies and trends

As of 2005, much of the Internet’s backbone—that is, its core infrastructure connecting so many of the world’s PCs—had been converted to 10 Gbps Ethernet, and researchers were working to develop even faster technologies. Ethernet speeds tend to grow by a factor of ten every half decade, and if this trend continues, speeds as high as 100 Gbps can be expected by 2008. Many researchers, however, believe that 100 Gbps is a bit further off, expecting an intermediate stop at 20 or 40 Gbps.

On the wireless side, some researchers are working on a new local area standard, known as 802.11n, which would double transmission speeds for wireless devices to nearly 200 Mbps. Other researchers are developing a new standard called Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), which would allow wireless mobile devices to seamlessly move from local area networks to wide area cellular networks and back again. Currently, there is no way for personal digital assistant (PDA) handhelds and cell phones to move automatically between a wireless LAN and a wireless WAN or vice versa. Service is interrupted, and a manual adjustment must be made on the device for wireless service to continue.