about what is needed in order for today's networks to support these types of business- class services. We're seeing a transition from portables to wearables, such as watches with medical monitors and pagers, eyeglasses with embedded computer displays, belts and watches with embedded computers, rings with universal product code readers and displays, clothing with built-in mobile phones and MP3 players, badges that have Internet connections and tiny teleconferencing cameras, and even implants that store a person's entire medical and/or financial history. In order for this trend to really take off, we need a broadband wireless infrastructure and personal area networks (PANs) to locally connect all these smart devices. (Wireless PANs are dis- cussed in Chapter 15, "WMANs, WLANs, and WPANs.") We are also evolving to new industry models of information processing and communications As we move more toward pervasive, or ubiquitous, computing, more of our senses-such as smell and taste-will become part of what we com- municate by using a network. Each person will be able to choose the media for- mats conducive to his or her cognitive map and then fully enjoy the realm of sight, sound, touch, smell, and even taste and touch on the network. Visualization will become three-dimensional and life-size, meaning there will be telepresence. Later this century, we will witness the enhancement and augmentation of our human Chapter 10 Next-Generation Networks powers through neural interfaces, bringing about an era, in some 25 to 30 years, whereby we'll be able to engage in virtuality without the constraint of devices that have to be worn or enclosed cubicles that have to be entered. For these models of information processing to become a reality, we need tremendous bandwidth, extremely low latencies (i.e., delays) in the network, guaranteed performance (which means administrated QoS), and broadband wireless access and PANs. Broadband Applications The role of broadband applications is so vital to understanding the need for broad- band a