Internet history and
eBusiness technology infrastructure
MGMT 230
Week 2
After today’s class you will understand:
• The development of the Internet and
eBusiness
• The technological infrastructure required for
eBusiness to function
– Web hosting alternatives
INTERNET HISTORY
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
A short history of e-business
• 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)
Some uses of the internet in 2015?
• Write down all of the things that businesses,
organizations and consumers use the internet
for in 2015
E-BUSINESS: THE TECHNOLOGICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
What *is* the internet?
• “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
What is the technology that underlies
eBusiness?
• 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. 7th Ed. Brown et al. Pearson 2012
Speed of transmission and bandwidth (capacity)
50,000 bits (ie. 1s and
0s)=1 page of data
1,000,000 bits = 1 page of
a graphic
3 billion bytes (8 bits=1
byte) or 3 gigabytes = 1
hour of HD video
10 pages via a 56 kps
modem (analog phone
line) = 9 seconds
10 pages of graphics via a
56 kps modem (analog
phone line) = 3 minutes
1 hour HD video via a 56
kps modem (analog phone
line) = 5 days
10 pages via a 1 million bps 10 pages of graphics via a 1 1 hour HD video via a 1
DSL line = 0.5 second
million bps (mbps) DSL line million bps DSL line = 6.66
= 10 seconds
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. 7th Ed. Brown et al. Pearson 2012
Web servers
• 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. 7th 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
Dynamic content needed for eBusiness
• 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. 7th Ed. Brown et al. Pearson 2012
Three tier client/server network to handle
eCommerce transactions
3
2
1
HTTP request
4
HTTP request
Internet
Catalog database and
database management
software
TCP/IP
HTTP request
HTTP request
Web
client
8
7
Web
server
Tier 2
5
6
Tier 1
Order fulfillment and
payment processing
system
Source: Electronic Commerce 7th ed.
Schneider. Thompson. 2006
Tier 3
Demands on eCommerce servers
• 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 (19952000), 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
– Very simple calculation to arrive at a broad estimate of
bandwidth requirement for a small business: File size being
served multiplied by number of requests = bandwidth
requirement
Managing Information Technology. 7th Ed. Brown et al. Pearson 2012
Key elements of a B-to-C electronic
commerce system
–The week after next we will look at
the requirements for implementing
basic eCommerce
–Next week we will look at how to
select and activate a domain name
–Now we will turn to the problem of
finding a suitable web host for your
site
WEB SERVER AND HOSTING BASICS
Server/Hosting basics
• Main options for getting a site online
– Dedicated server
• Co-located server or on premises server
– Shared (or virtual) server
• “traditional” web hosting
• Cloud based offerings (eg. Amazon Web Services)
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)
• Used by medium and large businesses – as an example: Telus has a
variety of “managed hosting” options (starting at around $500 $600 per month)
Shared or (virtual) servers – “traditional”
web hosting for SMEs
•
•

•
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
Disadvantages of “traditional” web hosts for SMEs
– 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)
– Sometimes too cheap – be careful and know the risks.
Shared or (virtual) servers – cloudbased offerings for firms of all sizes
• Becoming very popular in the last few years –
biggest provider is Amazon Web Services
• Payment model is very different – “pay only
for what you use” in terms of storage,
computing power, bandwidth etc
• Used by some of the biggest names in the
business, such as Netflix (3 minute case study
video)
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)