It is this hourglass design that provides the Internet's enormous flexibility in accommodating new transmission technologies and new applications, and its ability to serve as the convergence platform for data, telephony, TV, and other media. However, as the Internet has grown and adapted to the wide variety of demands and stresses being placed on it, the original design has suffered a number of mutations - the waist of the hourglass is no longer as narrow and elegant as it once was.
In this talk, I review the evolution of the IP layer of the Internet, discuss the consequences of those changes, and speculate on the future shape of IP.