So high speed internet service sounds pretty good, right? Just by its name you’d think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and in fact there are many out there who might argue that it is at least close to being just as good. But to understand what high speed internet service is, we first need to take a look at the origins of the internet, so we can give ourselves a reference point and see how non-high speed (or low speed, as it might otherwise be known) connections have given way to the more popular and faster services of today.

It is a subject of wide debate, but for the most part the internet is believed to have been started in its earliest and most basic form sometime in the late 1980’s or early 1990’s. Early technologies did exist before that time, but we won’t get into the details of what took place leading up to the internet during the ’60’s and ’70’s. At that time, the web was quite an archaic form of communication, consisting of mostly text-based communication and low-bit graphics.

The internet gets its name from the fact that it is essentially a “network of networks,” meaning that it allows multiple computer networks to link to each other. “Internetworking,” as it was called, gave way to the term “internet” as we know it today. So the internet developed as a means by which groups of computers separated by large geographic distances were able to talk to one another.