During Christmas 1995 a family in England went looking for Santa on the World
Wide Web, in the hope of entertainment, information, games or surprises. This
is a story of their disappointments, a discussion of possibilities and an
appeal for solutions. The Internet is struggling with the load placed on it by
Web traffic [HREF10]
and tips on reducing the size of Web files are common
(Cartwright,1996). Dedicated ISDN capacity and high bandwidth ATM are now
available to the Internet. Charging for information content and a guaranteed
level of network service could fund upgrading the Internet. Multimedia
communications standards will begin to make exciting applications feasible
over the network . A move towards a circuit and cell switched Internet using ISDN and
ATM instead of shared Ethernet and overloaded backbones would encourage the provision of
quality information which was readily accessible. The alternative for users is
frustrating network delays and disappointment with the received information.
