terested in the Internet, the more web browsers were developed and came into use. The main web browsers in use today are Netscape and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Web browsers were developed that were more graphically (picture) oriented and easier to use than the old text based applications. This led to an increase in the number of people that began connecting themselves to the Internet and this led to a slow down in the traffic of the Internet. Graphic files are very large and the amount of bandwidth ("amount of information that can be transmitted in a line in a given period of time" (Pfaffenberger 53))required to send them across the Internet is also large, thereby causing a natural slowdown in the system when many people are on it. As more people began using the Internet, businesses also became interested in it for its huge market potential. Businesses began building web sites to attract customers that were very complex and rich in graphics (photographs, movies, sound clips, and animations). This further led to a slowdown in the current Internet bandwidth. The bigger the file, the longer it takes to send it to your computer and the longer that you must be connected on-line. The more people on-line, the greater the demand on the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to increase their bandwidth to the Internet backbone. The more demand on the backbone, the greater the pressure to upgrade it to an ever increasing capacity. Every- six months surveys are taken as to the number of people using the Internet. Below, is a chart showing the number of users in the United States, and their projected growth by the year 2000.As can be seen by the graph, the amount of growth from people using the Internet is tremendous and is almost geometrical in nature (Kantor 1-4). With more and more people connecting through American On-line, CompuSereve, Prodigy, and local ISPs, growth is expected to continue to increase at an outstanding rate. It has caused cha...
