The Internet has grown tremendously. In just a few decades, the number of networks has
increased from tens to hundreds of thousands. Concurrently, the number of computers
connected to the networks has grown from hundreds to hundreds of millions. The Internet
is still growing. Factors that have an impact on this growth include the following:
❑ New Protocols. New protocols need to be added and deprecated ones need to
be removed. For example, a protocol superior in many respects to IPv4
has been approved as a standard but is not yet fully implemented (see IPv6,
Chapter 27).
❑ New Technology. New technologies are under development that will increase the
capacity of networks and provide more bandwidth to the Internet’s users.
❑ Increasing Use of Multimedia. It is predicted that the Internet, once just a vehicle
to share data, will be used more and more for multimedia (audio and video).