Chapter 8. The Internet

In this chapter...

• The History of the Internet

• The World Wide Web— Linking and Graphics

• Email—Computers that Send, Store and Receive Messages

• Internet Service Providers, Application Service Providers and Portals

• Search Engines

• Internet Addresses

• Electronic Commerce and Advertising on the Web

• Privacy on the World Wide Web

• Legal Issues

• Open Cable—Cable Companies as Both ISPs and Network Service Providers

• Intranets and Extranets

• Security on the World Wide Web—Establishing Trust

• Conclusion

The Internet is a medium that has fundamentally changed the pace of business processes and the way organizations exchange information with each other. Businesses sell, place orders, receive orders, collaborate, train employees, provide customer service and bid for products over the Internet. Consumers commonly use the Internet to exchange electronic mail with family members, pay bills, conduct online stock transactions, calculate income tax returns, make travel reservations, shop and conduct research. They also spend time on the Internet playing games, listening to music and viewing entertainment.

The Internet is a connection of multiple networks. The networks communicate with each other over a suite of standardized protocols, Transmit Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), in which data is broken up into “envelopes” called packets. For the most part, network operators use high-speed routers to transmit these packets. Internet traffic is sent at gigabit speeds. The high-speed lines are the backbone of the Internet. They carry the greatest amount of Internet traffic. The Internet backbone transmits requests for information, entertainment, audio and video broadcasts, email and business-to-business transactions. The different carriers that operate Internet backbone exchange traffic with each other at metropolitan area exchanges (MAEs) and network access points (NAPs).

The Web is a vehicle for multimedia presentation of information in the form of music, audio, video and text. The World Wide Web is not separate from the Internet. It is a way to navigate from resource to resource on the Internet by clicking on highlighted text or graphics from within browsers. As long as they use World Wide Web browsers, all PCs are compatible with the Web. Users point and click their way from computer to computer on the Internet. Before the World Wide Web was developed, documents on the Internet were available only as text. There were no pictures, no “buttons” to click on to issue commands and no advertising banners. There was also no color; everything was black and white.

Individuals and organizations connect their locations to the Internet via many types of telecommunications services including T-1, T-3, analog lines, digital subscriber line (DSL) services, integrated services digital network (ISDN) and cable TV facilities. Internet service providers (ISPs) aggregate traffic from many users and send it over high-speed lines to the Internet backbone. ISPs maintain routers and servers at their sites. The servers, powerful PCs that can be accessed by many users, perform various functions. They contain customer email, businesses' e-commerce applications and home pages for consumers as well as specialized content such as sports information and online games. Servers are located at hosting sites as well as ISP data centers. Hosting sites, where Web content such as corporate, ecommerce and entertainment sites are kept, have servers with information from, for example, search companies such as AltaVista and online retailers.

The popularity of the Web has made the creation and implementation of technologies that enable sites to handle spikes in traffic and large amounts of traffic imperative. One of these techniques is caching, which spreads content among servers at the “edge” of the Internet, closer to end users. In addition to lowering traffic at each server, caching lowers the cost of bandwidth. It lowers the amount of distance packets travel to access Web pages.

Innovations also have occurred in search engine techniques and formatting email for marketing. Search engines are an important tool for organizing sources of online information. They have become faster and the results are more accurate. Corporations use them in their own Web pages to help employees, potential customers and trading partners find information on the corporate Web. Email is now used as a way to disseminate spam, marketing announcements and newsletters that look similar to Web pages. These email messages use the same method, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), as used to apply formatting and insert graphics on Web sites.

Despite the technological improvements in the Internet, Internet companies are struggling to find profits. Scores of businesses that operated Web sites have gone out of business. Moreover, it has been generally agreed that advertising as a primary vehicle for underwriting the Internet is not viable. To date, gambling (which is illegal in most states), auctions, pornography, music and games are popular and often profitable on the Internet. While commercial organizations depend on the Internet for contact with customers and vendors, e-commerce where businesses exchange purchase orders and pay bills directly to one another's order entry and accounting systems are in their infancy.

Because the World Wide Web is new, legal, privacy and security questions are being raised that previously have not been addressed in this context. For example, freedom of speech for adults sometimes conflicts with protecting children from unsuitable online material. Online sharing of music and copyrighted articles may interfere with authors' and musicians' rights to earn royalties. In other instances, Microsoft's control of PC operating systems and browsers and AOL Time Warner's market share in instant messaging (IM) may give both companies unfair advantages on the Internet. All of these issues raise interesting questions about privacy, free enterprise and free speech.

World Wide Web technology is used by commercial organizations to create extranets and intranets. Extranets use Web technology to create platforms from which trading partners and customers can communicate. Intranets use the technology for internal portals and browser access to corporate data. The adoption of Internet technologies and protocols for internal use by commercial organizations represents a major impact of the Internet. It has led to faster, more convenient access by employees to corporate information.