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John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems, believes that the knowledge market is the next killer internet application.

"Education over the internet is going to be so big," he said.

He and other experts forecast that half of all private and public-sector organisations will turn to web-based instruction to meet employee training needs over the next year.

The United States e-learning market is projected to be worth $5.5 billion (Pounds 3.5 billion) by 2002 while 85 per cent of US universities will have online components by the end of the year.