Wibbly Wobbly Webbly

No not the Spider toy that my kids played with, but the world wide web.

It's 30 Years old.

Funnily enough I remember those days, as I was involved in Network support back then. I oversaw the transition from point-to-point multiplexed lines to a mainframe down South to an open standards network involving this new internet thing and a standard called x.25.

I got into network support due to my involvement in packet radio back then. I passed my Ham radio exam back in 1982 and around the end of the eighties started dabbling in what was called packet radio: the same x.25 packet standard that enabled the internet was being used to transmit data over the air. It was a revelation in communications at the time.

Anyway, I was working at ICL and the network manager suddenly decided he didn't want to work there any more, so decided to not come into work. Ever. After a few weeks of him refusing to turn up at work, they decided that maybe he wasn't coming into work and needed someone else to make sure the data kept flowing. I was approached by our then I.T. manager who asked the pertinent question "you know a bit about networks and stuff don't you?". To which I replied, yes I do.

I was instantly converted into a network support person on the spot. The manager continued: "Oh, and by the way, there's a project in the pipeline to convert all the factory's point-to-point links to open standards using the internet. I need costings and a project plan...."

So it came to pass that I got my first dip into not only pukka network support, but also project management. In at the deep end, as usual.

It sorely needed the upgrade though, as the ceiling was bowing under the weight of several hundred direct terminal link cables feeding into a single rack :-)

In the end though, I had successfully converted the factory to a full ethernet network, with several hundred terminals replaced and the ceiling repaired. All in time and under budget. I got an award for that.

Anyway, not long after converting the whole factory to t' ethernet and t' internet, along comes the world wide web. Rather than only big companies having internet access with servers on their premises,  the www allowed even small companies to have an internet presence, thanks to offsite servers and HTML, which made pages accessible to ordinary people.  Now information was provided by a click on a natural language link, rather than remembering some obscure I.P. address provided by a supplier.

Online ability snowballed down until even us ordinary mortals could have our slice of the web.

Thanks Sir Tim, you brought a severe amount of information into the homes of the masses.

Happy Birthday WWW.