Many people may not be remember life without the internet but it was only back in 1990 when web hosting came to life as this was when Tim Berners Lee developed the initial program for the web. This was followed by a variety of programs and soon companies were developing web hosting services of their own and this has created the modern environment where there is a huge level of growth in hosting web sites. Web hosting may seem like a familiar term but before 1991, this term was unheard of, which means so was the internet. If you would like to study the growth of the internet, a great place for research is the internet itself which shows you how far it has developed. Recent decades has seen an explosion in technological advances and after the radio and television products, the internet is probably the next biggest. Bear in mind there are over 50 million websites on the internet and think what you would look at if you didn't have websites to view.

A look back at earlier days

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.