Technological Growth Of The Internet

Technological Growth Of The Internet

There have been many advances in the technology that is now available for the internet, including, Packet Switching, Cloud Storage, Wireless, Mobile Devices and Domain Names.

Packet Switching

Packet switching is a communication method used in digital networking that sends packets of data.

This technology is use to optimise the available channel capacity on a network so the latency is reduced when sending data. The internet is the most famous place that is known for using packet switching.

When the data is put into its separate packages, they are transmitted individually and can take entirely different routes to the destination. After all of the packages that are from the same message are at the destination they are assembled into the original message.

Packet switching has helped to protect information sent across the internet because the data is split up. This has aided the growth of the internet because you can now easily send personal details over the internet, meaning that people are more trust worthy and use the internet for a much wider range of things.

Cloud Storage

Cloud storage is a type of online storage where data is stored in virtual lockers. You can buy storage from large companies that operate large data centres. There are many advantages of cloud storage.

• Companies or users do not have to install physical storage in their homes or work places as it is all stored by the companies that offer the cloud space.
• You do not have to be responsible for making back-ups or other maintenance tasks, these are carried out by the service provider, this means that you can focus on the work in hand. However this extra work for the providers means that it could be more costly.
• Cloud storage means that you have access to a huge range of resources and applications anywhere in the world from a web interface.

However there are also disadvantages when it comes to storing your data in the cloud.

• The security of the stored data could be a concern when storing personal data because it is in the hands of the service provider, and some people may be able to hack into the data as it is being transferred.
• The performance could be lower than traditional local storage because of internet connections. This could mean that information takes a long time to upload or download.

Wireless

With the invention of wireless internet and mobile devices being able to connect to the internet nearly anywhere in the world has been a great aid the technological growth of the internet.

Wireless internet allows people to connect to the internet without needing to be plugged into a router, this has had great advantages for users at home and work alike since you can have multiple people connected at once and they can be separated equally so work spaces are not crowded.

You are able to fit as many people onto a wireless network, with the sacrifice of bandwidth since it has to be shared among everyone, to counter this you would have to buy faster internet which can be costly. You can also use internet boosters to boost the signal around a large corporation to keep the connection speed constant in the building.

Mobile Devices

A lot of different mobile devices can now connect to the internet too, with more becoming available all the time. These include, Laptops, iPods, iPhones, Smart Phones and Tablets. Not only can you get wireless routers, you are now able to access 3G to have the internet with you on the go.

Because people are now using mobile devices for a lot of their internet access, many website developers are now producing a version of their site for mobile browsing. Very popular social networking sites have adapted to this and are now even more popular as people can keep up to date with what they are doing on the move. 


Wireless internet and mobile devices have aided the technological growth of the internet because they have allowed people to upgrade from just accessing the internet in their own home, to being able to get on just about anywhere they are.


Domain Names

The domain naming system is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers. It translates the requests for a domain name into IP addresses. (Unlike domains, IP addresses are not useful for humans, as they don't contain any information that makes them recognisable.)

These domain names have helped with the growth of the internet because it means that humans can remember their favourite websites by using keywords from the URL. If this technology was not invented then we would have to remember the specific IP address for each website that we wanted to visit.