Origin of The Concept
In operating systems, the term terminal host traditionally denotes a multi-user computer or software providing services to computer terminals, or a computer that provides services to smaller or less capable devices, such as a main frame computers serving teletype terminals or video terminals. Other examples are a telnet host (a telnet server) and an xhost (X Window client).
The term "Internet host" or just "host" is used in a number of Request for Comments (RFC) documents that define the Internet and its predecessor, the ARPANET. While the ARPANET was developed, computers connected to the network were typically main frame computer systems that could be accessed from terminals connected via serial ports. Since these dumb terminals did not host software or perform computations themselves, they were not considered hosts. The terminals were connected to the terminal hosts through serial interfaces and perhaps circuit switched networks, but not connected to any IP based network, and were not assigned IP addresses. Today's IP hosts may, however, lack ability to serve as terminal hosts.
RFC 871 defines a host, as a general-purpose computer system connected to a communications network for "... the purpose of achieving resource sharing amongst the participating operating systems,...".
Read more about this topic: Host (network)
Famous quotes containing the words origin of, origin and/or concept:
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)