Corporate communications
At a corporate and business level internal (local and wide area) network connections generally use TCP/IP internetworking infrastructure but the data packets are securely sent from one location to another instead of into the public Internet cloud where they may go by any (generally unknown and unpredictable) route. This is considerably more costly particularly over longer distances. When such communications (including database interrogations) were exclusively text based they involved a small number of data bytes (see comments on file sizes above) but as employees have gained access to the Internet and files began to contain images logos and the like the volumes 'blew out' crippling network speed and/or increasing data transfer costs.
This has accelerated the trend to using the public, relatively free Internet to transmit corporate data. With an increase in the public bandwidth and an increase in the range of publicly available services, not supported on internal networks, this trend can be expected to continue. This is expected to lead to a new business networking paradigm (embracing cloud computing) that will radically change business systems over the next ten years.
Conventional wide area networks that grew during the past decade may be replaced by cloud based communications. In this environment local area networks (directly connected by dark fibre and/or copper – for example within a building or campus) will remain hardened against intrusion but will encompass an extranet or similar functionality that facilitates inter-node communications that allows users direct access to the cloud for such purposes as video conferencing and to use external cloud based business applications including market access and e-commerce.
These local networks will become autonomous nodes from the point of view of secure document storage data processing and security functions but more integrated through externally shared applications and data. The increasing use of the Internet and increasing spread of broadband communications will free these nodes from present geographical constraints.