A joke I get knowing that it is totally whoosh! to everyone I know in real life...<p>Jokes aside I think there is more to the story than the article, in the early 90&#x27;s &#x27;ATM&#x27; was going to be the future:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode</a><p>In a nutshell that is 51 byte packets with layers of TCP&#x2F;IP on top - 7 layers stuff (or however many it is). Fortunately neat TCP&#x2F;IP saw off the ATM challenge and its networking complications (where any packet could go any way across a network to not necessarily arrive at the receiving end in an orderly fashion. I am glad we got to the Internet without ATM or &#x27;Token Ring&#x27; (imagine a whole internet and one token, that would be funny) or DECnet or any of the other contenders that once existed (such as those Microsoft things). I was there at the time but I have no idea why the world coalesced on TCP&#x2F;IP putting network engineering voodoo out of business. Getting computers to talk to each other was once a dark art, well beyond the abilities and budgets of mere mortals.