Web Hosting 101

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The history of we hosting started in 1990 when the first web program was written by Tim Berners Lee. A great number of programs followed with companies creating their own form of services to offer web hosting which has resulted in the modern scenario. Today there is a huge increase in the web hosting industry. Although the term web hosting is very common today, it meant nothing before 1991 and similarly, there no ideas of the internet at that time either. However, to get the best from modern web hosting it can be worthwhile to research the development of the internet and it has developed a lot. Aside from television and radio, the internet is probably the largest technological development and there are over 50 million websites, making up the platform of the modern internet. If you did not have websites to visit, what would you do online?

How it all started.

It was back in August of 1962 when J.C.R. Licklider of MIT introduced the ideas that went onto form the internet. Licklider created a lot of articles regarding the future and one of his main topics was about the Galactic Network which was based on millions of computers linked to each other providing information of many people to benefit from. The next step for Licklider was to take a trip to the Advanced Research Project Agency [ARPA] which was the computer science project offered at MIT. When there, Licklider attempted to wow and detail the benefits that would come from networking and linking computers together.

An interesting point to mention here is that the militants developed the ARPA at the same time as they developed NASA, in order to find a manner in which the United States could make pace to catch up with USSR in the space arena after launching Sputnik, an artificial Russian satellite. Computer networking initially meant packet switching, based on the concept that it would be possible to send data through telephone lines as small packages rather than using the solid lines of circuit. In this manner, the connections would be used only when information was traveling through it, which would free up space on the system for the computer to perform more activities. Later on, while working on a project for allowing the telecommunication system to even survive a nuclear war, Paul Baran would come up with the Hot Potato networking design, which would lay the base for what would come to be known as 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.

Although its early use may have been mainly benefited by computer and technologically minded people, the internet was soon to spread to the general public, greatly assisted by its simplistic methods. Of course, as the internet grew, complexities followed but it was offering many new benefits and the business world was not slow in predicting a positive future nor was it slow in cashing in on it.

Web hosting was pretty expensive in the earlier days, but now it is quite reasonable, though a bit complex for a common man to decipher. The beginning saw big companies renting space on their server, and this has become a business now. The number of companies offering web hosting services is equal to the number of companies providing access to the internet. The internet has evolved with the evolution in computers. The way business is conducted has seen a drastic change with the introduction of computers and web hosting facilities.

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.

Prior to this, there had been publications of various TCP/IP related features which enabled networking without even knowing the potential that this protocol had for the future. In the past couple of years, most of the discussions at the IETF meeting gave a lot of importance to topics related to the TCP/IP protocols and the manner in which it could be expanded. For this purpose, some tools were required, and discussion was also done on its features. Some basic products meant for networking were developed for this purpose, which provided an internet connection. These were the limits to which commercial efforts went. But when the users of the internet grew substantially, it became an essential service and the internet captured the imagination of the common man. Technology developments had a big role to play in making this possible.

This can be seen in the way that many IT organizations such as Microsystems, Sun, Microsoft or IBM have moved into the internet market with an array of products, tools and other items to assist the development of the internet and web applications. There has been a development in the way that web servers are providing access to customers and the web pages that they need to visit, in addition to a large range of additional services and features.

In order to facilitate this growing demand, there has been a need for hardware manufacturers to manufacture bigger and better working servers to continue the rate of growth of the web hosting industry. The internet and how it works has changed dramatically over time and it is now viewed as a Peer to Peer [P2P] network, which has developed from the previous Personal Computer [PS] and client server states. There are a multitude of features that can be undertaken on the internet and they include distributing data and information, contacting others by email, logging remotely and much more. If you can think of it, it has probably already been done, yet there are still many more transformations to come from the internet. Concepts like internet telephony and television are very recent additions and who can say what form the internet will be in when it comes to a decade or so from now.