The History of Web Hosting
Web hosting began in the year 1990 when Tim Berners Lee wrote the first web program. Many other programs were written thereafter, and many companies came up with their own web hosting service which made possible the present scenario, where there is tremendous growth in the arena of web hosting. It is also interesting to note that prior to 1991, nothing called web hosting was known to the humankind. This invariably means that there was no concept of the internet in 1991 as well. But if you want to find out the history of web hosting today, you would have to take recourse of the internet. Such has been its development! Technology has developed a lot, and the internet is the biggest development after the radio and the television. It is again worthwhile to note that internet is powered by more than 50 million websites, which form its core base. Ask yourself, what would you do online if there were no websites at all?
How it all started.
It was in 1962 and through the eyes of J.C.R. Licklider that the genesis of the internet began at MIT. A whole host of articles were created by Licklider which shared his ideas about the Galactic Network which described computers being linked to each other, providing information resources that everyone could share. The Computer Science program at MIT was also known as the Advanced Research Project Agency [ARPA] and this was where Licklider was scheduled to visit. Whilst there, he would tell of his ideas and try to convince people there was a demand for this form of networking computers.
It is always interesting to be aware of the political background at the time and ARPA was developed at the same time as NASA. After the Russians launched Sputnik, their artificial satellite, there was a huge need for the Americans to keep pace with their Soviet counterparts. The first form of computer networking came through packet switching, which enabled data to be transferred as tiny packages through telephone lines which was a huge improvement over the previous form of utilizing circuit lines that were solid. A great benefit was that this connection was busy only when information was passing through and this helped to free up room to allow the computer to undertake additional tasks. Paul Baran invented the Hot Potato network design when he was trying to create a package that would ensure telecommunication data to be passed in the event of a nuclear war. This design was to play a major role in the development of the internet.
Following on from this, was the process that allowed computers to talk back and forth to each other and there is no doubt that 1991 was a pivotal year for the development of the internet. It was already around before then but this year was the base for the internet to grow into much bigger things. A major step came when the National Science Foundation] NSF] made a judgment that the web restrictions that prohibited commercial activity should be lifted. This changed everything and resulted in much more scope and possibilities for the internet. What is now known as e-commerce was born and a whole host of companies who foresaw the benefits the internet would bring came rushing in behind. It was at the tail-end of 1991 that WWW or the World Wide Web started to be used by CERN and it incorporated Hyper Text Markup Language [HTML.] HTML was developed by Tim Berner Lee and it was linked to the website address or it’s Uniform Resource Locator [URL.] That’s a whole of abbreviations to learn but it is now synonymous with the location of addresses for websites and the World Wide Web.
Internet no longer remained confined to the computer technicians, but with additions being constantly made to its format, it became increasingly used by the common man due to ease of understandability. But the complexities of the internet grew as well. The business sector forecasted that internet would have a great future, and they capitalized on it.
As the internet was starting out, it was expensive to host a web site but this is no longer the case but although it has gotten cheaper, it is still very difficult for some to use. There is no doubt that renting server space has now become a major business and it is true that there are as many firms offering services to host web sites as there are providing internet access. As computers have evolves, so has the internet. Equally, the business world has developed at a greater pace with the addition of web host providers and computers.
Statistics claim that today there are 35,000+ businesses which host 100+ websites on their server. Due to the increase in competition, the industry is seeing a huge growth. In fact, as you read this, 100′s of companies have already been added to the list. The first program for the WWW was of a hypertext editor which was executed in the NeXT machine. A line mode browser was used at that point of time, designed by Nicola Pellow, a student. The server published the specifications of HTTP, UDI and HTML in order to facilitate discussion by people who research on the given topic. For accessing the internet, browsers like Cello, Mosaic, etc. were introduced to enable clients to work on machines other than NeXT. 1994 marked the beginning of the World Wide Consortium, which is a landmark event where companies formed together to create common protocols for the Web, and then began a world of the web.
Before this development, networking had been undertaken through a number of TCP/IP features but the people at the time had no concept of the future of the internet. Recent years much debate and praise to issues stemming from TCP/ICP protocols and its development, with much of the praise coming from the IETF meeting. More tools were required to continue the progress and further debate and conjecture about how best to facilitate expansion was discussed. An internet connection was vital and a number of easy to use products were created with this aim in mind. At times it seemed as though there were restrictions on how far the commercial activity would go but as numbers of people using the internet grew, the importance of the service developed. The more the internet became integral to everyday life, the more developments and technological change had to develop to make it all possible.
Some of the Information Technology major companies like IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, etc. are getting into the market of the internet, and many tools, products, etc. have been developed to improve web applications. Web servers are made available in such a way that they offer the people access to the webpage that they require, and many other features which may help them as well.
In addition to tools and services, there has been a requirement for the makers of hardware to improve the size of their power servers to ensure the growth of the web hosting industry continues. There is no doubt that the way the internet is used today is drastically different from its origins. It may have started off with Personal Computers onto the client server and then to the Peer to Peer [P2P] type network. There have been abundance of different features that came to life thanks to the internet and these include passing of information and data, communicating via email, being able to log on remotely and many other useful functions. It seems that if you want it you can have it but also bear in mind that the internet is still rapidly developing. With television and videos on the internet being the latest features, it may be hard to predict what is coming next on the internet but whatever it is, it should be interesting.
