Managing concurrency in the global network

Resource management in traditional networks has been the management of scarce commodities. Recent communication technologies shed a new light on the way resources are shared by the communicating agents. The advent of high-bandwidth optical fibre and the availability of cheap, high-capacity memory chips are shifting the emphasis to the management of the inherent concurrent access to and from the independent parts of a complex, distributed system. This paper raises some preliminary points on a possible framework for managing concurrency in the future global network and to gain insight into a new resource allocation paradigm which departs from the traditional "management of scarcity" thinking.<>