Web hosting services have come a long way from the first services offered. To get an idea of the change and the difference in what is meant by reliable web hosting, a quick review of the big changes that have happened helps to put things in perspective.
The Idea and Early Options
It may be hard to believe, but the internet was first developed as a concept in 1962 by a professor at MIT by the name of J.C.R Licklider. This included the concept of computers that could talk to each other in interconnected networks.
In 1966 the first wide-area network called ARPANET was developed by Lawrence G. Roberts and Thomas Merril, but it wasn’t until 1969 that remote computers where linked. This was between computers at UCLA and the University of Utah, where the two scientists operated.
In the 1970s TCP/IP transmissions became possible, which allowed different wide-area networks to communicate with each other using the same language and formats. This continued into the 1980s, where the concept gained ground with the general public and the term “internet” became mainstream.
The Boom
The National Science Foundation lifted all commercial restrictions on the internet in 1991, opening the doors to web hosting services. This included the development of the WWW (world wide web) as well as HTML language that allowed for all the services possible today.
In the early days of the technology, reliable web hosting was costly and really not that reliable compared to today’s standards. Now, with uptimes as high as 100% offered through redundancies in the infrastructure of the web hosting services, issues such as websites offline are a thing of the past.
In today’s reliable web hosting, look for the focus on professional support, value-added services such as daily backups and features that enhance your hosting experience as critical when choosing a service provider.