1. Check out this recent comment thread from a few days ago for an entry point to learning about numerous performance bounds caused by both design limitations a

1. Check out this recent comment thread from a few days ago for an entry point to learning about numerous performance bounds caused by both design limitations and extremely long standing feature gaps in the computer network protocols we nowadays use for global communications (I intentionally avoid the term "Internet" here, because, as one can hopefully gleam from the content linked to there, that name seems undeserving for our "global information superhighway"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19864808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19864808 2. Something important and very relevant to your question which I forgot to mention in that thread: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/201807/Documents/3_Richard%20Li.pdf https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/201807/D... This recent ITU slide deck by Richard Li (Huawei): https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/201807/Documents/3_Richard%20Li.pdf https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/201807/D... From this recent ITU workshop: https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/201807/Pages/Programme.aspx https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/Workshops-and-Seminars/201807/P... The webcast of which you can find here: https://www.itu.int/webcast/archive/t2017075g#video https://www.itu.int/webcast/archive/t2017075g#video (third presentation in the video) Naturally, given the information from point #1 on RINA, GNUnet & currently network technology issues combined with the fact that the plans presented above don't seem to really factor that information in, I dislike some of the directions the ITU & Huawei seem to go for there, BUT, even so, this presentation basically exactly answers most of your questions (I think the other commenters already did a most excellent job answering what the presentation doesn't), even generalizing them to seemingly "far out"—yet apparently entirely feasible—ideas like 'Holographic Teleports' (think VR on steroids.)