Networking's future appears to stay focused on achieving higher speeds, even though our data rates already do everything we want. The real goal is to get that speed to everyone, and do it in a secure environment.

WANs: After years of build-out in the long-haul telephone and Internet backbone networks, there's more than enough capacity to accommodate needs for the immediate future. The economic downturn has slowed the provisioning of all this capacity. Lots of dark fiber is available to light the future when necessary.

MANs: This is the hot spot in the market today. Metro networks either fail to meet the current speed and capacity needs or don't exist at all, so there are plenty of growth opportunities (see "Optical: Undisputed King Of High-Speed Data Transmission," p. 57).

LANs: Virtually all medium and large enterprises have been fully networked for years. However, there will be an ongoing need for upgrades in service to higher speeds and gradual replacement of older s

Another trend is the growth in home networks. Wireless dominates with Ethernet 802.11b in the lead, but viable phone-line and power-line network products have finally become available. Affordable access gateways now make it fast and easy to network several PCs at home.

Wireless Ethernet also has a life. The recently approved 802.11g standard offers a speed upgrade path for 802.11b to 22 Mbits/s, and even 54 Mbits/s. And, 5-GHz 802.1la standard products are slowly rolling out.

Wireless networking will also benefit from forthcoming ultra-wideband products. In February, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the use of UWB for networking and in short-range radar applications. UWB wireless LANs should produce data rates of over 100 Mbits/s and at very low power. This will enable inexpensive video links in home networks and even wireless versions of IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0.

ystems. More and more enterprises are adopting wireless networking as well because its declining cost allows them to take advantage of the flexibility it offers.

Cable TV's hybrid fiber-cable (HFC) networks are almost everywhere now. This very reliable and affordable technology will keep dominating broadband. Most project cable as the continuing leader in broadband growth.

The classical network topology is the mesh, where all nodes are connected to each other. Even though they're very expensive to implement, there's a growing interest in mesh networks because they provide network redundancy and thus QoS (quality of service). Further, mesh networks scale more easily than other topologies, so many local carriers and metro network vendors are seriously considering them.

PANs: We're just now starting to see the effects of personal area networks. Most are wireless

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