Chapter VII Internet services 1- Introduction: a. As we have explained in previous networking chapter, Internet is a huge global telecommunication network that comprises all the world existing telecommunication networks without exception. b. Internet can be compared to the global transportation network that includes all networks of ground transportation, air transportation and water transportation including rivers lakes and oceans. c. Many services use global transportation network to move people, animals and merchandise and many services use the Internet to move information in different forms. d. Because of the complexity and diversity of these services, several agencies were created to oversee the standards that synchronize the well working environment of the internet body with all its services. e. These agencies include the following: i. IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) controlled and financed by the NSA (National Security Agency). ITEF consists of volunteer members who develop Internet standards or RFCs (Request for Comment) that control Internet operational technology. ii. W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is a member agency Founded and headed by the web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. Its role is to develop and promote standards for the Web to lead it to its full potential. iii. IEC (International Electro-technical Commission private non-profit agency that prepares and publishes international standards for electronic and electrical technologies. iv. ISO (International Standardization Organization) based in Geneva (Switzerland) prepares and promotes international commercial and industrial standards. f. VeriSign authentication services: (Symantec Corporation): Operates a diverse array of network infrastructure, including: i. Two of the Internet’s thirteen root name servers. ii. the generic top-level domains for .com and .net iii. A variety of security services: 1. Digital certificates considered as electronic ID for businesses. 2. Payments processing. 3. Managed firewalls to mobile call roaming. 4. Toll-free call database queries. 5. Downloadable digital content for mobile devices. 2- The purpose of this chapter is to explain the most important of these services and the possibility to use them in business. 3- Despite the fact that every Internet service has its own protocol: http, ftp, pop, smtp, imap, etc… these services must abide by the Internet protocol TCP/IP as well. 4- This condition implies that every service has dual loyalties. (Loyal to 2 protocols). 5- Email @ 1- Introduction: a. Electronic mail was known and used long before the Internet. b. Electronic messages using the Morse code and the telegraph technology early in the 19th century were labeled as electronic mail. c. Many computer and telecommunication experts believe that the need for improved electronic mail contributed effectively in the creation and development of the Internet itself. 2- Early Email systems: a. Many attempts to developing network email systems resulted in some of the following technologies specifications: b. Network should have compatible devices c. Networks should be similar (same topology) d. Both sender and receiver should be online to be able to send and receive.= e. Address and protocol were specific to each network 3- Modern email evolution a. After the creation of the ARPANET by the Department of Defense and the important military need of fast mailing system the above limitations were not acceptable and soon an interoperability mailing system was born in 1971 using ARPANET computer network. b. This system was based on the work of Ray Tomlinson who is credited with using the sign @ (commercial @) for the first time to separate the name of the subscriber from the name-address of the machine. c. Tomlinson system on the ARPANET is the forerunner of modern email service that uses Internet pathways and Internet technology. 4- Modern Email technology: a. Modern email service is based on “store-and-forward” technology. b. Email messages are coded using ASCII format. c. Email service provider or Internet service provider (ISP) maintain 2 mailboxes for each subscriber: One for the incoming mail and another for the outgoing mail. 5- Email protocol a. Sent emails use a protocol known as SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) which is used only to deliver your sent emails to the servers of their recipients. b. To get incoming mail from their mailboxes, subscribers use one of two available protocols: POP (Post Office Protocol) or IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) c. POP is a simple protocol that allows you to: i. Access the mailboxes and download emails to your computer (all available emails together) which allows you to leave the Internet connection and read your emails at your ease. The latest version is POP3. ii. Messages must be deleted with the possibility to leave copies on the server. iii. Too many copies left will result in your mailboxes being full and mail reception denied while the boxes are not emptied. d. IMAP is a client server protocol that allows emails to be received and held by the server of your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and allows you to: i. Work with the server mailboxes as if they were on your own computer. ii. Download each email message alone from the Inbox folder and work offline like POP and the message doesn’t have to be deleted like in POP. iii. Create folders or mailboxes and classify emails as: “deleted”, “answered”, “sent items”, “flagged”, “favorites”, etc… and file them in organized folders iv. Access same email from multiple computers 6- Email important features for business include: a. CC (Carbon copy): allows you to send the email to many addressees simultaneously. Each addressee will see the addresses of all other recipients. b. BCC (Blind Carbon copy): Addresses of BCC recipients are hidden from all other recipients. This feature is extensively used in business and government. c. Attachment: The most important feature that enables email to carry along all type of files including multimedia non-ASCII format files. d. To be able to travel with plain text ASCII formatted emails, non-ASCII files are converted into ASCII format using a technology known as MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) that consists of a set of standards designed to make attachment exchange via email possible and easy routine. 7- How MIME works? a. At the sender end: i. Check the email message for the presence of Non-English items and converts them into ASCII code. ii. Check about the presence of attachments and treats each of them separately converting it into ASCII code. iii. Inform the receiver end about what to expect to make reverse operation as easy as possible. b. At the receiver end MIME performs the reverse operation and displays the message and attachments in their original format. 8- Mailing lists or distribution lists: a. This is the most used feature in business and consists of sending email messages simultaneously to a group of people or businesses or a combination of both using only one collective address. b. List software is available with MS Outlook and similar application software that enables you to build your own mailing lists. c. Businesses and organizations of all types use this feature to build several mailing lists that contribute to improving their productivity. d. Many people and businesses abuse mailing lists by selling them as a commodity in the marketing industry and sometimes in the black market. e. Customer awareness is highly necessary so that whenever you disclose your email address anywhere for any reason and most importantly in commercial and service businesses, you must ask as of where your address will end up? Or whether it will be part of a mailing list sold in the black market without your own knowledge or your own consent. 9- Email service provider: a. There are many ways to get email services that can be summarized by the following: b. ISPs (Internet service provider) like AT&T, AOL, Bright house, etc… provide email service as part of other services in the same package. c. Webmail provided by: i. Web-host services: provide room for email service associated with the website itself. ii. Free standing website that have its own domain name, servers and database. d. Large webmail services each of which has its pros and cons. We will consider the most prominent and popular of them: i. Hotmail of Microsoft: lately was configured as part of Windows Live: 1. First free webmail 2. Provide as much space as you need (Inbox capacity increase automatically with your need) 3. No instant notification program offered. ii. Yahoo mail: 1. Free Yahoo site webmail 2. Unlimited storage 3. No excessive email usage permitted. 4. Charges for POP access to download incoming mail. 5. Easy to use interface. iii. Gmail of Google is the newest webmail with several unique features and offers the following: 1. Free webmail 2. 7 gigabytes of storage space 3. Free POP to download your emails to your PC. 4. “Gmail Notifier” software notifies you upon arrival of new email. iv. When using any webmail service it is strongly recommended that you download all emails to your computer instead of leaving them online otherwise your allowed storage will be filled very fast. WWW (World Wide Web) http://www 1- 2- Web evolution: a. The Web service is undoubtedly the most prominent service of the Internet b. Many people think Internet and Web stand for the same thing and in fact the population of the web and its too many tools had their astounding effect on Internet popularity especially as a means to get news and information. c. Tim Berners-Lee invented the web service over many steps: i. 1980 he wrote a program called “ENQUIRE” that link computer information points to each other. ii. He wrote “Information management” hypertext that became later the WWW. And he published the first web page. iii. 1990 he declared the invention of 1- The World Wide Web 2- HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) to format web pages 3- A global hypertext and hypertext Graphical user interface browser based on “WYSIWYG” (What you see is what you get) web editor to convert and display HTML tagged web pages. iv. He performed the first HTTP client server communication using the Internet. d. 1993 CERN (European Committee for Nuclear Research) and Tim Berners-Lee donated the Web invention to the world. And the first commercial browser MOSAIC (became later Netscape navigator) was created. e. 1994 Berners-Lee who is now a professor at MIT created the W3C that oversees the Web standards and he serves till now as the head of that consortium. f. 1996 Microsoft launched its Internet Explorer and its Hotmail webmail service and in 1999 Microsoft and its IE overtook Netscape navigator and blogger publishing service was launched. g. 1998 search engine Google started and performed over 3 million searches/day h. 2003 more than 3 billion web pages posted on the WEB. And 2004 Mozilla launched the newest browser FIREFOX i. 2006 the number of Web pages approached the 10 billions Website- Web page a. A website is a collection of web pages it is like a folder of HTML files (public- HTML) b. A web page is an HTML file that can be opened by a browser c. Items in each page are linked with other items in the same page or in other pages by means of hyperlinks that was behind the hypertext file and hypertext protocol names. d. Hyperlink: Element in an electronic document that when clicked, opens a related document Hypertext, hypermedia e. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP): Stateless protocol that works as a mailman to control communication between browsers of Web clients and Web servers 3- 4- 5- Web browser: a. It is a utility system software that connect users with different websites and web pages and perform 2 functions: i. Use URL and HTTP (Hypertext transfer protocol)to request Web pages ad websites from Web servers that host them. ii. Display the pages on user’s monitor. iii. If pages are not available it displays a message about that. b. Browser doesn’t possess all necessary tools to tackle all multimedia files without help; it rather needs the services of helper system software programs specialized in dealing with diversity of multimedia files. Helper applications can be a: i. Plug-in: Built to help the Web browser and enable it to offer extended services that enable users to view animations and videos, and interact with games and other multimedia content ii. Flash is a popular plug-in iii. Media player is stand-alone system software that enables the browser to open and play multimedia files (Microsoft media player) iv. Players and plug-in are known as helper applications that extend the power of the browser in dealing with multimedia files. v. Streaming multimedia enables the browser to begin playing the content of the file while it is being downloaded Web server: completes the following functions: i. Stores Web pages of websites they host ii. Store other related files (hyperlinked files) iii. Store files related to other Web services iv. Listen to HTTP that delivers browser requests for web pages. v. Retrieve the pages stored on its databases vi. Delivers requested Web pages to HTTP Web authoring languages a. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) (refer to the XHTML tutorial on the course website-helpful links) HTML is the basic language: HTML5 or XHTML is the latest version i. Uses predefined formatting tags ii. Tags are used in pair between brackets iii. The example below shows how this language works. <!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <title>Title of the document</title> </head> <body> The content of the document...... </body> </html> b- XML (Extensible Markup Language): i- It is a more friendly language based on HTML and allows the designer to use his own tags that are usually more related to the content of the page. This is a web friendly language. See the example below: <Grocery> <Grocery type="seafood"> <fish>red snapper</fish> <origin>wild caught</origin> <place>Alaska</place> <price>12.99</price> </Grocery> c- WML(Wireless markup language): i- WML is designed for web applications that are able to run on mobile devices such as iPad, Android and smart phones. ii- WML it is based on a special XML tag system that uses Select tags to define the selection 6- 7- Web authoring software a. Many WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web authoring software help you author web pages by following templates and taking a do it by yourself approach b. You don’t have to start from scratch like you do with HTML or XML; instead you follow a wizard or template that is already built using tags. c. You can use these application software even if you don’t know any Web authoring language d. Important characteristics of WYSIWYG application software are: i. Very convenient and very fast in authoring webpages ii. Templates almost make the web site authoring a very easy automatic task Important WYSIWYG software includes and not limited to: a. CoffeeCup Visual Site Designer i. Excellent for beginners ii. Very friendly WYSIWIG interface for Web design b. Serif WebPlus X2 i. Abundance of useful web design features ii. Abundance of wizards and templates iii. Very easy to use for beginners and professionals as well. c. Web Easy Professional i. Visually oriented design interface ii. Knowledge of mark-up languages is not required d. NetObjects Fusion 11 i. Enable beginners to build interactive websites ii. Fit all types of interactive well designed websites. 8- e. Eversoft First Page i. One of the first web design and development tools ii. It may be used by absolutely non experienced newcomers iii. Includes HTML editors and many tools that make the process easier and faster to complete. f. HTML-Kit Tools i. Requires knowledge and experience of mark-up languages ii. It cannot be used by beginners iii. It extends very proficient web design tools to experienced designers. g. Other Web development software for professional designers include i. AceHTML 6 Pro ii. UltraEdit iii. TopStyle iv. BestAddress HTML Editor h. Adobe Creative suite CS6 is a heaven for Web and graphics design offered by its powerful software tools for web and graphics design. i. Microsoft discontinued its Expression web design software and made it part of visual studios12 j. Both Adobe and MS software target professional designers and Web development experts. Web authoring services/web templates a. Services that design and complete the website for you b. They are expensive and the follow-up is always a problem c. On the other hand thousands of templates are available for you on the Web to choose from and you usually have 2 options: i. You buy the template entirely so that nobody else can use it and the price in this case will be between 2 and 10 thousand dollars and may be more. ii. You use the template one time to author your web page and the price will be few hundred dollars or less. Web addressing: 1- 23- 4- 56- IP address a. Four numbers (0 to 255) separated by periods, such as 64.233.161.104 b. 4 bytes are used to store the IP address i. The number in each byte cannot exceed 255 ii. The number of IPs available is 256^4 Domain name is an associated English names assigned to IP addresses Uniform Resource Locator (URL) a. Acts as a Web page address b. As clear address of web pages, URLs make web addresses easy to remember and use c. URL incorporates domain name of Web server and location of Web page file on server http://www.cs.ucf.edu/courses/cgs2100 Top-level domain (TLD): Final portion of domain name of which we will consider: a. .com used for commercial sites b. .edu used for education sites c. .gov used for government sites d. .org used for non-profit sites, etc…. Web portals: Pages designed to act as entry points to the Web ISP (Internet Service Provider) must maintain a farm of servers including a domain name server that converts URLs into their corresponding IP addresses. www.paradisehotel.com client www.paradisehotel.com ISP 111.255.006.222 ** URL and IP are fictional used only for illustration purposes. Domain name server Search engine 12- 3- Definition: A search engine is a huge software tool that finds related documents from diverse Internet websites using keywords provided by the users. How it works? a. Crawls the Web with bots (automated programs) called spiders or crawlers b. Builds a huge indexed database that links trillions of documents posted as Web pages to their respective websites. c. Provides fast answers to queries of people looking for information wherever it is available in websites they have no idea about them and they have no URL of any of them. d. Keywords used must direct the search to a specific target: If you are looking for a hotel in Disney not Orlando or Florida Hotel e. Search engine allows the use of logical operators: AND, OR, NOT, etc… f. Search engine gets you addresses to websites that meet your keywords requirements that’s why users should be literate about how to use it. g. Meta search engine allows users to run keyword searches on several search engines List of top 10 search engines rounded numbers. Engine Google Bing Yahoo ASK Aol mywebsearch blecco dogpile WebCrawler Info.com Average Daily visitors 30000000 5400000 5300000 4200000 1100000 650000 300000 95000 90000 85000 rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 4- 5- Internet telecommunication types a. Synchronous communication: People communicate in real time exchanging thoughts in a flowing conversation b. Asynchronous communication: Allows participants to leave messages. Chat and Instant messaging a. They offer synchronous text messaging between two or more users i. Chat room: presents chat forum that relate to specific topic or specific group of people attending the forum. ii. Virtual chat: Provides an enjoyable, live like, 3 – D virtual environment to chat and interact with many type of users and agents. b. Text messaging (Short Message Service or SMS): a. Method for sending short messages between cell phones. b. A message cannot be more than 160 characters. j- Web Logs (Blogs): a. Sites created to express the views and opinions of an individual b. Originally used as online journals, but as they became more mainstream, tools were developed to aid users in creating blogs and RSS reader was set as a tool used to subscribe to a blog E-commerce 1- Evolution and tools: a. E-commerce consists of a system that supports electronically executed business transactions. It is known as clicks and mortar by analogy with the regular bricks and mortar business and its physical location b. E-store: Business website used to promote electronic transactions is considered equivalent to a bricks and mortar location in the c. E-storefront: is considered to be the home page of the website e-store. Which necessitate that special attention must be given to the design of the front page and its content that must be: i. Informative ii. Rich with interesting topics iii. Appealing for visitors to come again. iv. Entertaining d. E-shopping cart: i. E-shopping cart is a collection of cookies created by the web server and stored on individual hard disks of users. ii. Cookies: 1. Small text files generated by web servers and stored on your computer Hard Disk Drive. 2. Can contain data or unique identifier that can be used to look up your personal profile in a database and dispatch pop-ups and other advertisement material to your desktop 3. Only web server that created it can access it. 4. May be a threat to security and privacy 5. Your computer can deny cookies. 6. Cookie sample below: cckcookie3ddhetherewww.fastmode.com/233300292347023478221143780103098710307* 2- Types of e-commerce: a. Business-to-consumer e-commerce (B2C): Connects individual consumers with sellers that result in the following: i. Dis-intermediation: eliminating middlemen and brokers and most of the wholesale and semi-wholesale intermediate sales. ii. consumer benefits: 1. Access to variety of products and services without constraints of time or distance 2. Lower cost iii. business benefits 1. get customer feedback and personalize offerings to customer's profile 2. higher sales income 3- 4- 5- b. Business-to-business e-commerce (B2B): Supports business transactions across private networks, the Internet, and the Web (Raw materials, tools, parts, machinery, office equipment, transportation and shipping). c. Consumer-to-consumer e-commerce (C2C): Connects individual sellers with people shopping for new or used items and may take place over: i. Specialized auction websites like e-bay, u-bid, Amazon, etc… ii. Own websites or highly visited other’s websites. Mobile commerce: M-commerce a. Use of smart phones and other high mobility devices to buy online. b. E-commerce over smartphones and pad computers c. Takes advantage of mobile Internet and extensive Web applications. Cybermall: the online equivalent of the regular bricks and mortar shopping mall or shopping center and consists of a huge website where you can lease online space instead of running your own website. The advantages are: a. Strengths: i. High exposure (any customer of any business is a potential customer of all other businesses. ii. More effective marketing iii. Higher standards b. Cons: i. Higher cost ii. Needs to abide by mall standards iii. Less freedom to behave on your own and apply your own policy. E-tailing (Electronic retailing) When a retailer use Internet services (email solicitations, websites, social media, etc…) to sell his products or services. a. It is a retail business to consumer e-commerce. b. Retailer must be able to: i. Keep the market informed about products and prices ii. Deliver on time to customers doorsteps c. Most retailers practice e-tailing that sometimes extend his market far beyond neighborhoods, cities, counties and states. d. Good examples of e-tailing businesses are: Wal-Mart, Target, Macy’s, etc… Internet Telephony 1- Introduction: This technology also called IP telephony or VoIP telephony consist of converting telephone analog audio waves into digital format that will be cut into packets and abide by the Internet standards. 2- 3- VoIP evolution: a. Internet telephony continues to gain increasing popularity every year This technology started its journey in 1995 with VoIP software released by a small software company “Vocaltec”. b. VoIP growth was slow (less than 5%) annually until 2007. c. Since 1997 until today annual growth exploded to more than 15%. d. Reason for this growth may be summarized by the following: i. Low cost with an ultimate target to offer it for free in the future. ii. Video telephony is becoming ubiquitous, easy and available to all Internet users as part of their Internet subscription with no additional cost. iii. Mobility: It is available from any Internet access point. iv. Easy control and back-up. v. Abundance of Internet apps and VoIP service providers. e. The industry is estimated to be more than $ 15 billon today. VoIP service providers: Many service providers a. Cable companies are the most important providers and claim more than 60% of the market b. Other providers include: i. Phone Power ii. VoIPo iii. Phone.com and many others c. VoIP important applications i. Skype: Pioneered the video telephone service that contributed heavily to the popularity of this technology. ii. Vonage: offer hardware and software with a local telephone number that can be used anywhere in the world if you have Internet access and a PC. iii. I-phone Viber is cross-platform software app protocol for VoIP that offers video telephony over I-phone and all other smartphones that are able to run the app. iv. What’s app messenger is a cross platform software app that offers texting only with the possibility to exchange multimedia files. v. Face-time app offers video telephone on I-phone or any smart phone that is able to run iOS mobile operating system. vi. Many other applications add up to VoIP apps arsenal making VoIP available everywhere around the clock. vii. The list comprises: Tango, ooVoo, Yahoo! Messenger, Vtok, Quick Video, WeTalk, Vichat, Camfrog Vive and Paltalk Social networking 1- Introduction: a. Social networking sites use the Web and its HTTP protocol beside the Internet protocol TCP/IP. On other words, they are derived from the Web service and they cannot be counted as direct Internet services. b. It is absolutely true that social networking services claim more than 60% Internet pathways use now. c. Social networking services changed the way we live, communicate, socialize and do business extending the living playground frame to include the whole world. d. Hundreds of millions of people communicate daily via social networking sites that have different share of the market ranging from few hundred thousand to few hundred million. Site popularity is function of many criteria partially listed below: i. Easiness of account creation ii. Attractiveness of the site content iii. Information updates iv. Services and applications offered by the site v. Security of information vi. Decency of topic material involved. vii. Speed of access enhanced by friendly and simple user interfaces e. We will try to visit some of social networking sites and find out what specific characteristics each of them has. 2- Facebook: a. Most popular social networking website has over 1 billion monthly visitors today. b. Founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates, then students at Harvard University, to allow them and other students to exchange pictures. c. Accel partners and Jim Breyer invested over $13 million in to finance the venture in 2005 that causes the site to be ranked in 2009 by Compete.com as the worldwide most used service d. Started in the Stock Market in 2012 and collected more than $5 billion the same year that make it join the Fortune 500 list. e. Consist of: i. Creating an account. ii. Populate your page with information about you (mostly optional, including photos) iii. Optionally, create a group around a common interest topic or join an existing group. iv. Enjoy all Facebook services: 1. As individual: a. Stalk famous people and exes. b. Remember important information (birthdays of family members, friends, co-workers, etc…) and surprise them. c. Play Lexulous game and other games, etc… 2. As business: Most important requirements for business success evolve around Facebook: a. Succeed on Facebook b. Build your Facebook page c. Create ads on Facebook. 3- 4- 5- Twitter: a. Text micro-blogging that was introduced in 2006 by Jack Dorsey while being an undergraduate at New York University. b. A tweet is a 140 character or less text message based on SMS text messaging and Podcasting technology. c. 2nd most popular social networking site today with over 250 million monthly visitors d. Tweetie (now twitter) application is the official Twitter client for the Iphone, Ipad, and Mac. e. Start of 2013 Twitter users were allowed to create and exchange six second video clip by using an application called Vine. f. Twitter basically works by building groups of followers who commit to a topic or celebrity or leader etc… g. This operational nature made most famous people (movie stars, athletes, politicians, etc…) join twitter and enrich its population. Other Social networking sites have some similarity with either Facebook or Twitter some of them are listed below with estimated monthly visitors (in millions): a. LinkedIn : over 100 b. Pinterest: over 80 c. MySpace: over 70 d. Google+: over 60 e. Ning; over 12 YouTube: a. Special social networking site that enable people to post, view and share video clips. b. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim met while they were PayPal employees and founded together YouTube in 2005 c. In February 2005 they activated the domain name www.youtube.com d. You tube was purchased by Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion e. In 2011 Google and YouTube joined forces that enables YouTube videos to be directly accessed from Google platform. f. Starting May 2013 YouTube allowed some providers to collect a charge of 99 cents or more per channel. g. YouTube is an advertisement heaven for people and businesses because its users make about one billion visitors a month apply two billion hits in a single day.