It’s only been 20 years since the birth of the internet so the evolution of web hosting in the last 10 could almost be considered its coming of age. There wasn’t even an industry when the when restrictions where lifted in 1991 and the World Wide Web took shape. By 2001 one could only really say that it had been established.
By 2001 we where still at the stage where Australia was banning forwarding of emails because they technically infringed on personal copyright laws. These where the days of Napster was creating controversy over digital music rights and for the first time in history five High Schools in the US got Internet2 connections. It was the first time that Verisign adopted the full Unicode set, opening it up to use in all languages. These could still be considered the early stages of the internet.
What has changed the most in the last ten years is the amount of resources that are available for website hosting. The monthly price on average has pretty much stayed the same but what you get for your money has multiplied many times. The amount of storage space and bandwidth for traffic has multiplied exponentially over the years.
When the internet became a world wide phenomenon it was impractical for anyone who needed website hosting to own their own server. This created a burgeoning new industry because it made so much sense to rent out shared space on large servers. In the beginning this was expensive and complex technology but everyone wanted to invest in it because it seemed that the demand was just growing endlessly.
Technology developed faster than the demand at that time and hardware capacity soon became large and inexpensive. This led to price wars and only the most competitive suppliers could make it through. Smaller Tier 1 providers where bought out and amalgamated into the larger suppliers.
Growth would remain slow for a while. The average modem was still a dial up with a 56K speed which meant that the demand on servers was limited. Since then the number of internet users has quadrupled so it is more useful to be prepared for high demand these days. With increased usage and bigger websites there is finally a demand for the capacity on offer.
Much of the internet use shifted to different ways of storing content online so services such as YouTube and Flickr where where huge amounts of information such as video and images ended up. This would reduce the demand created by many site at a host because these are normally what uses the most space. By 2009 the free service called Geocities closed down however and this might have been due to the ease of use and lower cost of paid website hosting these days.
Today there is almost endless capacity, or at least more than most people could use. What set’s website hosting companies apart is simply the service and the options they provide. The latest innovation is in cloud hosting and although there are security concerns it does provide the ultimate in flexibility as well as scalability and the best performance.
Web hosting always has and continues to grow. Web Hosting UK offers brilliant packages that will make things simpler for you to understand the workings of webhosting