The advent of the Internet and web hosting

Even though web hosting is still young, its story has gone through several stages of development. Its year of birth is considered to be 1991: this is the time when the National Science Foundation in the United States (NSF) removes trade restrictions on the web. Used previously only for education and research, NSFNET also becomes accessible for for-profit organizations.

The WWW and the Electronic Commerce Revolution

This decision coincides with the emergence of the World Wide Web (WWW) founded by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at CERN. Only a few years later, in 1995, NDFNET is decommissioned because WWW becomes the default method for accessing the Internet. This period is known as the e-commerce revolution. Once companies realized the potential of communication across the web, the need for web hosting offer has increased sharply. In 1995 there are 16 million internet users, which represents 0.4% of the world’s population. This January the agency We are social has published its annual report according to which Internet users in 2017 are 3.77 billion people, or 50% of the population. Today the digital presence has become indispensable for almost everyone: every company, non-profit organization or even freelancer has its own website. The first time web hosting became popular was the launch of GeoCities in 1994. It was a platform that allowed users to upload content pages to digital cities.

Shared hosting

At the time to host its own site, we had to own a server. Since the servers were expensive and very busy, shared hosting appeared. According to a research done by Pingdom, the average storage space that was offered to host a website in 1998 was 153 MB and this for $ 16.28 per month. A big change has been made over the years: now the price-quality ratio of accommodation services has improved considerably.

The Cloud

Since 2007 another way of web hosting has appeared: the Cloud.

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) definition, cloud computing is the access via a telecommunications network, on demand and self-service, to configurable shared computing resources. It is therefore a relocation of the IT infrastructure. Very popular among small businesses for its low prices and for its flexibility, the cloud attracts more and more users today.

Source : Gozil