 advances that present us with different strategies and architectures. It becomes increasingly diffi- cult to make a commitment to a set of technologies today because, after all, tomor- row might introduce a vastly improved architecture. With products and protocols developing SO quickly, it is difficult for a given solution to become widely embraced, and without mass appeal, many products and services never have the opportunity to develop in the marketplace. We're experiencing a wild unleashing of bandwidth, largely driven by develop- ments in both optical networking and wireless communications. We're also seeing a trend toward advanced applications that include high degrees of visualization as well as sensory streams. Finally, convergence is driving the move to broadband, as industries, devices, and applications find natural synergies in the digital world and merge platforms with one another. The following sections examine some of these trends in more detail and explore the ways they affect next-generation networks. Communications Traffic Trends For a decade, the Internet demonstrated tremendous growth rates. According to TeleGeography's 2005 survey of Internet backbone providers (www.telegeography. The Broadband Evolution com), global cross-border Internet traffic grew by 49% in 2005. Although this is down from 103% in 2004, it is still phenomenal. As of early 2006, the combined average traffic on all cross-border backbone routes was 1Tbps. The average traffic is expected to range from 2Tbps to 3Tbps by 2008. The most important factor in the rate of future traffic growth is likely to be the increase in the number of broad- band subscribers. However, in developed markets, the growth in broadband sub- scribers has begun to slow, which is a sign of market maturity. We're also seeing a shift to machine-to-machine communications. Today there are some 6 billion people on earth, only half of whom are served by telephony ser- vices. Yet there are billions of microprocessors in existence; the increasing popula- tion of 