Are you ready for the Grid? Get ready. It’s about to be the next phase of the Internet. The Net is currently comprised of ancient technology. We are using copper wires and archaic telephone hubs to transmit a digital signal. In some cases we rely on single-processor, PC equivalent machines to serve data from one end of the country to the next. There are far too many points of failure. The current infrastructure is bottle-necking. It’s like the 405 on Tuesday morning….a gianormous cluster phuk.

The Grid enables data to travel at the speed of light via fiber optic lines. No “noise” (telephone static) to interfere with the signal. Data will be able to flow without resistance from point to point, without hopping through 100s of nodes. The Internet as you know will be 100s of times faster.

With that said, I can now talk about a slightly different grid, but one of the same principals. MediaTemple is offering “grid-service” hosting. This is a remarkable evolution in shared web hosting. Instead of being placed on one super server, you’re provisioned hosting account will live on a grid of many servers. Your website will be able to extrapolate resources across the grid. Your site will now be able to withstand being on the front page of digg. Most hosting companies are illequiped for the digg effect (a sudden spike in traffic resulting in 10 thousand plus hits per second). A lot of the time they will suspend the user’s account until the traffic dies down. During a digg effect, the grid will pull enough resources to serve the site without failure.

The best part about the grid…the price. For $20 a month, you can host on the grid. It’s been a long time since I have used shared hosting. I manage my own servers, but this is far too cool not to try out. They guarantee 100% up-time and for the first time, I actually believe a hosting company in their claims.