Servers, what are they?

The concept of the server is predicated on one machine serving more than one user. The first true servers were part of the SAGE system developed by MITRE Corporation for the US Air Force to track and intercept airborne bomber threats. This system was the heart of NORAD. It is one of the largest – if not the largest – computers ever built, each SAGE computer covering two thousand metres and weighing nearly 300 tonnes.

However, when most people refer to servers, they are generally referencing the Internet, which also has roots in the US Defence Department and associated research division (DoD DARPA).

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The development of the ARPANET – the immediate antecedent of the Internet – in conjunction with a grant from the DoD and the University of California built a series of packet switches called Interface Message Processors (IMP), hardware that could be connected to any computer of the day. The IMP was built from a Honeywell DDP 516 computer then connected to an SDS Sigma 7 computer running under the SEX operating system, thus creating the first node of ARPANET. On October 29, 1969, the IMP with the Sigma 7 successfully communicated with a Stanford Research Institute SDS 940 running under the Genie operating system attached to a second IMP. At 10:30PM Pacific time, the first message was sent and received over the phone lines. ARPANET was born.

In 1970, computers were added to the network server at the rate of one per month. CERN created the replacement Network Control Protocol (NCP) for the protocol computers used to communicate over the network to TCP/IP in 1983. The DoD divested ARPANET in 1990 and by 1995, control of the Internet was released to a number of independent organisations becoming what is now the Internet.

In a hardware sense, a server is simply a computer – or cluster of computers – which interface the users with the network. In essence, a server is a gateway into the amorphous cloud where information is exchanged between one machine and another. The servers are interconnected in server farms, massive clusters of computers all associated with each other by hardware or software. For example, Google has server farm in excess of 450,000 computers in racks of 40 to 80 machines all connected with Ethernet in over a dozen cities. In addition to the data servers, there are dedicated servers that perform specialized tasks, such as ad servers, load balancing, spell checking and similar housekeeping tasks.