ateways). What influences the number of network sections on the end-to-end path? Well, that depends upon the CoS offered, the geographic area through which the given network section is deployed, the data servers' location within the CDN of the service providers (e.g. OTT service provides), and interconnection agreements between telecom operators (which are also influenced by business relations). In general, there can be one network section (e.g. in the case of local traffic, which has both source and destination hosts in the same network section) or more network sections on the path. However, Internet architectures allow networks to come and go on the run, SO the network sections used for transport of the packets may change over time. It is less likely that the network path will change during the lifetime of a given flow (e.g. during seconds or minutes), although in some cases it is possible or even mandatory (e.g. at handovers in mobile networks); however, transport networks (e.g. international interconnection networks) which interconnect core networks of telecom operators are less likely to change the architectures and routing principles (implemented via routing tables and policies in network routers and gateways) in a short period of time. In general, most of the routes do not change in short time intervals (e.g. seconds, minutes, or even hours). As with circuit switched communication in the past, the IP connectivity spans international boundaries, but it does not follow and does not need to follow the circuit-switched conventions, simply because the principles of IP communication end-to-end differ from circuit-switching at least in two aspects: (i) there is no mandatory need for reservation of resources end-to-end in the case of IP communication; and (ii) it is not mandatory to establish the path over the public Internet network between the two (or more) end-hosts by using signaling prior to the communication (e.g. any client host connected to the public Internet via any access network may contact any publicl