MGMT 230
Week 2

• The development of the Internet and eBusiness
• The technological infrastructure required for eBusiness to function
– Web hosting alternatives

How did we get here? Brief History of the Internet
• 1968 - DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) contracts with BBN (Bolt, Beranek & Newman) to create ARPAnet
(based on packet-switching)
• 1970 - First five nodes: UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, U of
Utah
• 1972: Network email is introduced
• 1973: The network becomes global: nodes added in UK and
Norway. The term “internet” is first used
• 1974 - TCP specification published by Vint Cerf. First commercial
ISP is launched
• 1979: USENET forms to host news and discussion groups.
• 1982 –The Internet with its 1000 hosts converts en masse to using
TCP/IP as a common protocol
• 1983: The Domain Name System (DNS) establishes the .edu, .gov,
.com, .mil, .org, .net, and .int system for naming websites.
• 1989: Tim Berners-Lee develops HTML and HTTP and the Web is born
Internet history timeline

• Email introduced in 1972
• Desktop computing became the norm for business in the mid-tolate 1980’s
• 1989 - World Wide Web devised
– text only until 1993, when the image tag was introduced into html
– this fueled commerce on the web eg.
• yahoo.com (1994 ) amazon.com (1995) ,ebay.com (1995), google.com (1998)
• By 1997 virtually every major company, organization, government, and media outlet had a web presence
• Internet boom lasted until 2001 when the “dot-com bust” occurred
• Since 2001 organizational and commercial use of the internet has matured, and now “all business is eBusiness”
• Business processes have become increasingly “network-centred” with cloud computing being the major trend of the past few years
• Up in Google’s Cloud (CBS) (video 5 minutes)

• “The internet is a physical thing, but the web is an agreement that we will use http and html”
Boair Qin via twitter
• Andrew Blum: Discover the physical side of the internet (TED talk 11 minutes)
• The internet is also an agreement that we will use common protocols such as TCP/IP, HTTP,
FTP, VoIP, POP3 etc

• Computer networks (LANs, WANs) joined by routers to the Internet
• The Internet includes the hardware that connects the computers, and the hardware that connects the networks
• The computers themselves (clients and servers) run a variety of software (OS, DBMS, server software, etc)
Managing Information Technology. 7 th Ed. Brown et al. Pearson 2012

Speed of transmission and bandwidth (capacity)
50,000 bits (ie. 1s and
0s)=1 page of data
10 pages via a 56 kps modem (analog phone line) = 9 seconds
1,000,000 bits = 1 page of a graphic
10 pages of graphics via a
56 kps modem (analog phone line) = 3 minutes
3 billion bytes (8 bits=1 byte) or 3 gigabytes = 1 hour of HD video
1 hour HD video via a 56 kps modem (analog phone line) = 5 days
10 pages via a 1 million bps
DSL line = 0.5 second
10 pages of graphics via a 1 million bps (mbps) DSL line
= 10 seconds
1 hour HD video via a 1 million bps DSL line = 6.66 hours
1 hour HD video via a 30 mbps fiber-to-the-premises line = 13.33 minutes
Bandwidth determines what types of communication – voice, data, graphics, video – can reasonably be transmitted over a particular medium
Managing Information Technology. 7 th Ed. Brown et al. Pearson 2012

• Web servers comprise
– Hardware eg. Dell, Oracle , IBM, HP etc (or custom built from components like the servers that Google uses )
– Operating system software eg. Windows, Unix, Linux etc
– Web server software eg. Microsoft IIS (Internet
Information Services), Apache
• Main job of a web server is to respond to and process http requests from web browsers running on client computers
Managing Information Technology. 7 th Ed. Brown et al. Pearson 2012

How a simple (2 tier architecture) web server works on the
Internet
Static html pages
Source: Electronic Commerce 7th ed.
Schneider. Thompson. 2006

• Static web page is prewritten and simply retrieved from the server
• Dynamic page is created on-the-fly by a program in response to a users request
• Example:
– Customer wants to enquire about the status of their order – enters order number into a form on a web page
– Server sends a query to a database in a higher tier
– Generates a dynamic webpage that contains the answer to the customer’s query
• Dynamic page generation technologies include Active
Server Pages (asp), PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (php),
JavaServer Pages (jsp)
Managing Information Technology. 7 th Ed. Brown et al. Pearson 2012

Three tier client/server network to handle eCommerce transactions
Web client
Tier 1
1
HTTP request
HTTP request
8
Internet
TCP/IP
2
HTTP request
HTTP request
7
Web server
Tier 2
3
6
4
Catalog database and database management software
5
Source: Electronic Commerce 7th ed.
Schneider. Thompson. 2006
Order fulfillment and payment processing system
Tier 3

• Transaction processing sites need to be available 24/365
• Need fast and reliable hardware
– eBay’s servers failed 15 times during its first 5 years (1995-
2000), and were down for a full day in 2000 leading to losses of
$5m and a 20% drop in share value
• Spare capacity for handling demand spikes
• Must ensure sufficient bandwidth is available
– Simple calculation to arrive at a broad estimate of bandwidth requirement: File size being served multiplied by number of requests = bandwidth requirement
Managing Information Technology. 7 th Ed. Brown et al. Pearson 2012

–
–
–

• You get what you pay for!
• Main options for getting a site online
– Shared (or virtual) server
– Dedicated server
• Co-located server or on premises server

• Your site shares a server with many other web sites, but you have your own domain name
• The best choice for SMEs so long as a reputable host is used
 Advantages:
– Relatively cheap eg. Telus Small Business Shared Hosting or HostPapa
– Easy to use - the service provider does all the work
– Sometimes too cheap - caveat emptor.
• Disadvantages
– May be limitation in features available (such as scripting and database support) due to security concerns
– The more sites you share the server with, the more likely there are to be problems (especially if other sites are busy)

Dedicated server, co-location, managed hosting
• A dedicated server has only your website on it
• Choices for a dedicated server
1. The server hardware and software is owned by you and located on your own premises
2. The server hardware and software is owned by you but located in a data centre or server farm on the premises of an
ISP (this is called a Co-located server)
3. The server hardware and software may be owned by the ISP, located on their premises, and managed by them
• In the case of a co-located server, the contract may also include management (backups, maintenance etc)
• Much more expensive – used by medium and large businesses – as an example: Telus has a variety of “managed hosting” options
(starting at around $500 - $600 per month)

Things to think about in selecting a web hosting firm
• Cost
• Services you need…for example:
– Bandwidth (how much do you need?)
– Email accounts
– eCommerce functionality
– Scripting / database environment
• Where is the server farm located?
• Reputation of the firm
• Service Level Agreement (read the fine print)
• Availability of tech support, amount of downtime etc
(research the firm first)