Potential targets will multiply as computers assume greater control over ever more operations in our society, from traffic management to intelligent buildings to robotic surgery.

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It is ironic, then, that South Korea's traffic setup was adopted from the Intelligent Vehicle Highway System, an ITS forefather pushed by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration in the early 1990s.

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Newcastle had been chosen because the city had "a long track record of making the city more intelligent using transport systems in order to keep the traffic flow moving", she said.

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CDNs can be thought of as repeaters, stationed strategically to help manage the Internet traffic by avoiding the backbone or by finding intelligent routes through it.

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The potential for GPS systems to track traffic snarls will be on show at the World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in New York this week, where one of two systems that went into operation earlier this month will be showcased.

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Software-defined networks will provide some of this flexibility by separating the control function from data forwarding, but there are additional capabilities emerging, he says, such as intelligent switching of wavelengths, the ability to mix dedicated bandwidth with best-efforts networks, and application layer network traffic optimization, e.g.

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