Mention multimedia to digital-age visionaries and they'll sing of data, graphics, audio, and video coming together in a virtual reality whirligig of sight and sound. Mention it to net managers and they'll recite a litany of real-world requirements: new standards, new technologies, new ways to meet soaring demand for bandwidth. Well, someone has to do the dirty work. Finding the storage capacity and bandwidth for a couple of days' worth of e-mail is one thing; finding it for users transmitting a couple dozen 90-Mbyte video messages a week is another (and just wait until they get their hands on full-duplex videoconferencing). Add to that intolerance to delay and jitter, and multimedia looms not as the next big thing—but as the next great challenge.
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