Early Internet communications were based on telephone long-distance switches, which became ports allowing computers to connect with modems. Remember Compuserve? They were one of the pioneers in indexing the huge amounts of data that were generated in the early information superhighway, that was really more like a county road at the time compared to the data created and transmitted today.
This topic was discovered on The Register Citizen in their article, “e-Tips and Traps: What’s goin’ on in that Internet Cloud?” So how does that fit in with the often referenced cloud? When new switches were created, allowing users to send voice by computer, computer networks were able to encapsulate phone data, instead of vice versa. This left large amounts of disk space unused by many organizations. So they began to lease out the space. So really, the cloud is kind of like a lock box at the bank. You put your valuables in there so if there is a break-in at your home, you don’t lose everything.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
