The Internet, which was initially devised for data connectivity, is now being
transformed into a converged platform to deliver voice, data, and video services (the
so-called triple-play ) through the universal Ethernet interface. Such convergenc e is
made possible by several factors: (1) new mpeg compression technologies which
tremendously reduced the bandwidth and storage required for both standard and
high-definition broadcast quality videos to reasonable values, (2) advances in
electronic memory, storage, and processing technologies, which allows thousands
of movies to be stored and switched in practical size video servers, (3) abundance
of bandwidth made available by low-cost wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM)
and high-speed Ethernet technologies, ...