Scenario Analysis on Future Internet

The Internet has grown out of its original scope and scale while its importance for the society has increased. This has raised considerable uncertainties and concerns about the future evolution. The authors apply Schoemaker's scenario planning method to identify and analyze the key trends and uncertainties and to create four alternative evolution scenarios for the Internet. The scenarios reveal that the challenges the Internet is facing can be solved in various ways, yet leading to different network and business architectures. The results are valuable in directing research efforts to the most relevant issues.