How it all began

"Lo" – that is how short and simple the first message sent over the Internet was. That was on 29 October 1969 and it was the first test run. The goal was to connect the University of California to the Stanford Research Institute in the United States. Incidentally, it took two attempts for the originally planned message to be sent successfully. During the first attempt, the connection was lost right after two letters had been entered. A couple of minutes later, the error was fixed and the whole word "Login" was sent successfully.

In the beginning, four research institutes in the United States were connected to each other over what was called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency) – the precursor to today's Internet. ARPANET was only being used by a few specialists at that time because it was complicated to operate and expensive to use. That changed in 1990 when the CERN nuclear research institute in Geneva, Switzerland, invented the World Wide Web and the first web browser with a graphic interface was developed. That was the breakthrough. It meant that Internet users could simply click on web links from anywhere in the world and browse the web in a matter of seconds.

51 years after the initial test in 1969, the situation has changed drastically. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, digital data traffic in the year 2020 is reaching new records around the globe. And even without that type of unforeseen development, the data network has been growing in importance. Office work without an Internet connection, home cinema without streaming, game consoles without online access? It's been a while since any of that has sounded normal.

Strong growth

And it is hardly a surprise that the experts from Cisco Systems assume that this trend will logically continue. In the recent Cisco Annual Internet Report, for example, they predicted a significant increase in active Internet users with the figure expected to reach 5.3 billion people worldwide by 2023; that corresponds to 66 percent of the world's population with almost 75 percent of internet traffic coming from home users.

Increasing requirements

That kind of growth naturally puts the online infrastructure to the test. Both mobile and landline networks must make giant leaps in the coming years in order to handle the anticipated data throughput.

Of course, the network quality will need to be improved in both the public and private spheres. Current trends such as working from home and home schooling mean that home networks are facing new challenges all the time. Many routers quickly hit their limits when multiple video conferences are simultaneously going on while music, TV shows and films are being streamed in other rooms. In that case, even having a fast Internet line connected directly to the home does not make a very big difference.

State-of-the-art network for every household

Fortunately, you can equip your home with a strong home network without having to use the hammer drill. State-of-the-art network solutions such as those from devolo are highly versatile and convert any power socket into a high-speed Internet access point, making mesh Wi-Fi available throughout the home. Without any need for changing the home's structure and with connection speeds capable of meeting the future demands of the Internet, which are sure to keep setting records.