Exercise 4-4

4.4.) What role can a VPN play in business-to-business e-commerce?

More and more business is being conducted using the Internet. Electronic commerce is not only a major new method of retailing merchandise (called "B2C" for business-to-consumer e-commerce), but it is also a way for businesses to trade goods and services among themselves (called "B2B" for business-to-business e-commerce). Interconnectivity of businesses is essential, and the Internet is the logical choice for the interconnection technology.
E-commerce must be secure. Private networks use physical separation for security, but it is impractical to have a separate infrastructure for each customer or B2B partner. Therefore, a closed, inflexible private network is not well suited for supporting e-commerce. A public infrastructure is more flexible but lacks security.
VPNs provide both interconnectivity and security.

Exercise 4-3

4.3. What do you know about building e-business applications as an Intranet, Extranet, Web portal, B2B, B2C or Virtual Private Network (VPN)? Find some examples on the Web.

Intranet
E-businessengineers(2009) states that Intranet is a private internal network used by individuals, within an organisation or enterprise and includes connections through one or more gateway computers to the internet. It may consist of several interlinked local area networks as well as using leased lines in a wide area network. An intranet uses standard internet protocols, TCP/IP and HTTP, to transfer data .An intranet network can be set up on a server to which authorized users, within an organization, have access.

Building e-business applications as an Intranet, for example:

My company's Intranet developers can design and build an intranet as company's primary tool for enabling employees to:

• access files, documents and knowledge
• share computing resources among employees
• send private messages through the public network
• facilitate working in groups
• access company announcements, procedures and policies

There is a good example website using intranet in e-business named Teradata (https://www.teradata4me.teradata.com/). Please see the below screendump!

Intranet resources share to the employees.

Intranet application is for employee!

Extranet

E-businessengineers (2009) states that an extranet is a closed network that uses internet technology and a public telecommunication system to share part of a business's internal information, securely, with employees, partners, customers, suppliers, vendors and affiliated businesses or organizations, please see the below figure for reference.

Building e-business applications as an extranet that can boost the efficiency of your order processing. As more customers and companies, worldwide, are using the internet as their main resource for purchasing products and services, an extranet is an ideal way to realise a bulk revenue stream that would benefit your company, for example: An anonymous FTP severs can be used for sharing product info such as manuals and specification documents.

Portal

IBM(2009) statues that, to some, portals represent communities; to others, they are trading hubs or e-marketplaces; and to many, they are integrated desktop environments. Putting aside the hype, a common theme of substance underlies portals -- a theme of greater levels of integration. From a unifying technology perspective, a portal is a single integrated point of comprehensive, ubiquitous, and useful access to information (data), applications, and people. This definition encompasses all the different views of the purpose and functionality of portals. But more importantly, strong pursuit of satisfying this portal definition will help evolve the next generation of integrated services and business processes.

There is some good example website using ports in e-business are MSN, YAHOO and Google.

B2B

Cheshirehenbury (2001) states that business-to-business (B2B) group includes all applications intended to enable or improve relationships within firms and between two or more companies. In the past this has largely been based on the use of private networks and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Examples from the business-business category are the use of the Internet for searching product catalogues, ordering from suppliers, receiving invoices and making electronic payments. This category also includes collaborative design and engineering, and managing the logistics of supply and delivery.

There is a website named buykorea (http://www.buykorea.org/) is a good example for B2B e-business.

B2C

Cheshirehenbury(2001) states that the business-to-consumer (B2C) group is a much newer area and largely equates to electronic retailing over the Internet. This category has expanded greatly in the late 1990s with the growth of public access to the Internet. The business-to-consumer category includes electronic shopping, information searching (e.g. railway timetables) but also interactive games delivered over the Internet. Popular items purchased via electronic retailing are airline tickets, books, computers, videotapes, and music CDs. A example that uses B2C for e-business is Alibaba (http://www.alibaba.com/)

VPN

Computerweekly (2000) states that a VPN is basically a Wan (wide area network) or extranet connection, typically running over a public service, such as the internet, rather than a company's own private network connections. The clever bit is that the end-user finds no discernible difference between using the public and private networks. Imagine a company that provides online shopping or banking services. With a VPN in place, not only is it simple both to add company offices and home workers into the network, but customers can access your network in a similar, but secure, fashion. Features such as an online catalogue can then be offered for any of these users to view across the Internet. Using VPN and the equally fashionable voice and data integration technology, for example, it would be possible for a customer to view the catalogue on screen while, at the same time, talking to a sales assistant. This need not be via an external call made separately to the office but as part of the same call, down a single VPN connection, to the same Web site, typically at local call rates. This same basic strategy, plus innumerable variations on the theme, can be applied to any number of scenarios - technical support being one example where human resource can be supplanted by automated techniques to handle simple enquiries allowing the staff to concentrate on the more complex problems.

References:

E-businessengineers (2009). “Intranet”. Received 15th March, 2009 from URL - http://www.e-businessengineers.com/Intranet.asp
E-businessengineers (2009). “Extranet”. Received 15th March, 2009 from URL - http://www.e-businessengineers.com/Extranet.asp.
IBM(2009), “Application Framework for e-business: Portals“, Received 15th March, 2009 from URL - http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-portals/
Cheshirehenbury (2001). “E-business Definitions-B2B”. Received 15th March, 2009 from URL - http://www.cheshirehenbury.com/ebusiness/ebdefinitions.html
Cheshirehenbury (2001). “E-business Definitions-B2C”. Received 15th March, 2009 from URL - http://www.cheshirehenbury.com/ebusiness/ebdefinitions.html
Computerweekly (2000). “Tunnel vision provides safe links”. Received 16th March, 2009 from URL - http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2000/11/02/177405/tunnel-vision-provides-safe-links.htm

Exercise 4-2

4.2. Describe the TCP protocol. How is it related to the IP protocol?

Cisco(2009) states that TCP is stand for Transmission Control Protocol that is a transport Layer (Layer 4) protocol of OSI model (Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model), it is known as a connection-oriented protocol, which means that a connection is established and maintained until such time as the message or messages to be exchanged by the application programs at each end have been exchanged. TCP is responsible for ensuring that a message is divided into the packets that IP manages and for reassembling the packets back into the complete message at the other end.

TCP is related to IP protocol, Techtarget(2009) states that TCP is a set of rules (protocol) used along with the Internet Protocol (IP) to send data in the form of message units between computers over the Internet. While IP takes care of handling the actual delivery of the data, TCP takes care of keeping track of the individual units of data that a message is divided into for efficient routing through the Internet.

For example, when an HTML file is sent to you from a Web server, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) program layer in that server divides the file into one or more packets, numbers the packets, and then forwards them individually to the IP program layer. Although each packet has the same destination IP address, it may get routed differently through the network. At the other end (the client program in your computer), TCP reassembles the individual packets and waits until they have arrived to forward them to you as a single file.



References:
Cisco(2009). “Internet Protocols”. Received 18th March, 2009 from URL - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/internetworking/technology/handbook/Internet-Protocols.html#wp4145
Techtarget(2009). “TCP”. Received 15th March, 2009 from URL - http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/dictionary/definition/what-is-TCP.html

Exercise4-1

4.1.) Describe the IP protocol. What is DNS?

Cisco(2009) states that IP is stand for Internet Protocol that is a network-layer (Layer 3) protocol of OSI model (Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model), it contains addressing information and some control information that enables packets to be routed. Along with the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), IP represents the heart of the Internet protocols.

Cisco(2009) also state that IP has two primary responsibilities: providing connectionless, best-effort delivery of datagrams through an internetwork; and providing fragmentation and reassembly of datagrams to support data links with different maximum-transmission unit (MTU) sizes.

Webopedia(2009) states that DNS is stand for Domain Name System (or Service or Server) that is an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Because domain names are alphabetic, they're easier to remember. The Internet however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, therefore, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address.

For example, the domain name www.example.com might translate to 198.105.232.4.

References:
Cisco(2009). “Internet Protocols”. Received 18th March, 2009 from URL - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/internetworking/technology/handbook/Internet-Protocols.html#wp4145
Webopedia(2009). “DNS”. Received 18th March, 2009 from URL - http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/DNS.html