ve as a guide to business investment in network development. Zhang notes that the physical testbeds created through the project will serve as a basis for further studies, such as social science research on the impact of connectivity in the home. The software and tools used to design and vali- date the network, particularly the emulation systems, will be used to create THE FUTURE IS FIBER-OPTICAL TECHNOLOGIES new curricula for network education in two- and four-year colleges. In fact, plans are already under way for an outreach program. "We will attack pieces of the problem according to our expertise and get together to hash out the architecture and develop some initial answers," Zhang says. He expects to have an experimental component at the end of the project in five years. The Internet has made a huge impact on society, but there are limits to today's network technology, notes Zhang. "We must not be satisfied by the Internet's apparent success," he says. "Breakthroughs over the last 30 years have masked its underlying problems. We need to take a fresh look at the architecture considering new requirements and the technology that has changed profoundly in the last three decades. The biggest challenge is to imagine the network beyond the Internet." 4.2 NEW OPTICAL MATERIALS Organic electro-optic polymers have long held the promise of vastly improv- ing many different types of telecom technologies. It now appears that scien- tists are on the verge of breakthroughs that will bring dramatic progress in such materials as well as the devices in which they are used. Electro-optic polymers are used to make devices that take information that has typically been transmitted electronically and transfer it to light-based optical systems. The latest developments will affect not just how much infor- mation can be sent at one time but also the power needed to transmit the information. The capabilities of the most recently developed materials are about five times greater than those of standard lithium niobate crystals, the best n