Horizontal and Vertical Distribution - What is the reason for their naming?

Question

So, as stated @ what is the Vertical and Horizontal distribution?, we have that

• Vertical distribution : Distributed processing is equivalent to organizing a client-server application as a multitiered architecture . Place logically different components on different machines .
• Horizontal distribution : Distribution of the clients and servers - more common in modern architecture . A client or server may be physically split up into logically equivalent parts, but each part is operating on its own share of the complete data set, thus balancing the load .

My question is more on the reason of the naming of the different approaches. It'd be interesting as a way of more rapidly recognizing each one of them (I always have a have a hard time memorizing things, but I'm hoping that understanding what's the reason behind the chosen names will turn the task easier..)

Thanks

Answer 1

Things on the same “level” imply horizontal, and naturally equivalent.

Things on different “levels” imply vertical, and naturally different.

These terms work well in the physical world, people are used to them and hence it makes sense using the in the digital world as well. Take a piece of paper and draw the architecture of your system. You will soon see it's natural to draw things horizontally or vertically as they fit in the architecture.