Branching off from this core data pipeline are smaller offshoot pipes that service end users at their homes and offices. You can think of the internet, then, as this core data carrying network that wraps around the globe - with nodes along each connection corresponding to the location of a data center. There were a number of added benefits like proximity to the core fiber networks that service the world - those copper cables were dug back up and the Fiber Optic cable was encased around it, like rings in a tree. So just like those first adopters who put all their servers in the same room, companies started putting all their servers in the same data centers - aptly named: “Collocation centers” because companies could “Co-locate” their software infrastructure there and interconnect. ![]() So latency became more important than ever - and as the High Frequency Traders will tell you, the best way to decrease latency is to get closer to the other box. Pretty quickly, interconnection became the whole point! Getting access to software or data residing in someone else’s office was important, heck, maybe that was where most of the business value came from! But if it took too long there was no point! More people were interested in getting into the internet game… and they all saw benefits from interconnecting with one another, just like the first few organizations and universities did. Not to mention very few people knew how it worked. You see - this infrastructure was still just getting started out, and was difficult to operate. Organizations quickly began to buy the infrastructure and make hires to develop online storefronts, and a whole cottage industry of managed service providers was born. It wasn’t a sure thing that people would be willing to put their credit card information in a computer, but people (and businesses and investors) were becoming increasingly convinced that everyone soon would. Then, think late 90s, the internet and e-commerce were really starting to catch on. ![]() Yeah, the same pipes and routes these women are ‘switching’ (yeah, like packet switching, see what I’m sayin’?): The data that would make sense to send “across a wire” would be sent through the existing telecommunications networks - comprised of copper wires laid throughout the 20th century. Some global organizations had needs that required information transfer across states or countries, but even today large-volume data transfer is mostly done physically for a number of reasons. It made a lot of sense at that point to just put all the servers in a building in the same room - that way all the space, power, and connectivity could be managed in one place, rather than having to run up and down the stairs from A side to Z side troubleshooting packet flow…įor the most part it was just that one company wanted to connect to another, or had high-value information that quickly became stale and worthless so they needed to get it there faster than by copper cable. If we were in the same office building this was pretty easy - all we needed to do was connect our mainframes in the basement or whatever server closet. Even a lot of our Operating System time-share algorithms are taken from that time.Įventually it made sense to network the mainframes, so one organization could use another’s organizations data and software, and vice versa. ![]() Lots of the RFCs that we use today in LANs *are* the RFCs that enterprise networks would implement in their mainframe systems. Most LANs are bigger than this now - and that’s basically what it was, a LAN. When you “sent an email” - you were writing a file to another person’s filesystem, basically!Īll users were stored on the mainframe, and an IT professional could manage the whole network from one floor or building because that comprised the entire network. Like a desktop with multiple users and monitor+keyboards at once. These terminals were just command interfaces to a time-shared mainframe computer - a large computer that was stored in a basement and wired up to the terminals. It was a way that they could keep files safe and share information across campuses more easily.īasically the first commercial computers can be thought of as simple terminals. The history of computation and networking is fascinating, but I will focus on end user devices and connectivity for now:Ī “long” time ago - around the 70s and early 80s the Internet was really just a bunch of mainframe systems throughout a college campus or government organization.
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