  Internet is known to display a highly heterogeneous structure and complex
fluctuations in its traffic dynamics. Congestion seems to be an inevitable
result of user's behavior coupled to the network dynamics and it effects should
be minimized by choosing appropriate routing strategies. But what are the
requirements of routing depth in order to optimize the traffic flow? In this
paper we analyse the behavior of Internet traffic with a topologically
realistic spatial structure as described in a previous study (S-H. Yook et al.
,Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, {\bf 99} (2002) 13382). The model involves
self-regulation of packet generation and different levels of routing depth. It
is shown that it reproduces the relevant key, statistical features of
Internet's traffic. Moreover, we also report the existence of a critical path
horizon defining a transition from low-efficient traffic to highly efficient
flow. This transition is actually a direct consequence of the web's small world
architecture exploited by the routing algorithm. Once routing tables reach the
network diameter, the traffic experiences a sudden transition from a
low-efficient to a highly-efficient behavior. It is conjectured that routing
policies might have spontaneously reached such a compromise in a distributed
manner. Internet would thus be operating close to such critical path horizon.
