So I am a big fan of National Public Radio – NPR. Today I learned that yesterday 10/29/09 was the 40th anniversary of the ‘internet’. Now, I am sure there are a number of theories on when the internet was started and who started it, but safe to say that at this time in history 40 years ago, two guys from California sent the first 5 letter message, ‘Hello’, over a wire between two computers and internet messaging was born.
Since this point in time people have been trying to reduce the amount of data sent over the internet. From email to instant messaging, from full files to compressed files and from disk drives to USB drives – people are always trying to make information trafficked over the internet smaller and faster. No surprise coming from a group of people who have turned every term on the internet into an acronym, from USB, ISP, PDA, and LCD to SRM, ARM, and DPM, techies are always trying to stuff more data into smaller spaces.
Over the past 2 years data deduplication has become the latest fad in putting more data into a smaller space. By removing redundant ‘blocks’ of data from the mass of files stored it is conceivable to reduce your data foot print by as much as 70%. Deduplication is playing a predominate role in backup, especially backup over the WAN. With deduplication, you can easily move your data over the WAN to a central data center for protection moving only small changes (blocks not files) of data and make even more room for FaceBook, Hulu, iTunes and more. What is next for the internet.