Telecommunication and Networking

Firms in the past used two different types of networks: telephone networks and computer networks. Thanks to telecommunications deregulations and IT innovations, telephone and computer networks are slowly converging into a single digital network. Computer networks have expanded to include Internet telephone and video services. Increasingly, all of these voice, video and data communications are based on Internet technology.

What is a computer network?

What are the major hardware, software and transmission components used in a network? What is an NIC? A network interface card (NIC) is a computer circuit board or card that is installed in a computer so that it can be connected to a network. Network interface cards provide a dedicated, full-time connection to a network.

What is NOS? The network operating system routes and manages communications on the network and coordinates network resources. It can reside on every computer on a network or it can reside primarily on a dedicated server computer for all the applications on a network.

What is a server computer?

What are the popular Server software?

What is a HUB? A hub is a small rectangular box, often made of plastic, that receives its power from an ordinary wall outlet. A hub joins multiple computers (or other network devices) together to form a single network segment. A hub includes a series of ports that each accept a network cable. Small hubs network four computers. They contain four or sometimes five ports. Larger hubs contain eight, 12, 16, and even 24 ports.

What is a switch? A network switch or switching hub is a computer connects network segments or network devices. networking device that

A switch is a telecommunication device which receives a message from any device connected to it and then transmits the message only to that device for which the message was meant. This makes the switch a more intelligent device than a hub (which receives a message and then transmits it to all the other devices on its network.) Routers: Switches create a network. Routers connect networks. A router links computers to the Internet, so users can share the connection.

A router is a device that forwards data packets along networks. A router acts as a dispatcher, choosing the best path for information to travel so it's received quickly. When data is sent between locations on one network or from one network to a second network the data is always seen and directed to the correct location by the router.

Key Digital Networking Technologies Client Server Computing: It is a distributed computing model in which some of the processing power is located within small, inexpensive client computers, and resides literally on desktops, laptops or in handheld devices. These powerful clients are linked to one another through a network that is controlled by a network server computer. The server sets the rules of communication for the network and provides every client with an address so others can find it on the network.

Client server computing has largely replaced centralized mainframe computing in which nearly all the processing takes place on a central large mainframe computer.

What is Packet Switching and how it works?

Packet switching is a method of slicing digital messages into parcels called packets, sending the packets along different communication paths as they become available, and then reassembling packets once they arrive at their destinations. Packet switching entails packaging data in specially formatted units (called packets) that are typically routed from source to destination using network switches and routers.

Each packet contains address information that identifies the sending computer and intended recipient. Using these addresses, network switches and routers determine how best to transfer the packet to its destination.

TCP/IP and Connectivity Different components in a network communicate with each other only by adhering to a common set of rules called protocols. A protocol is a set of rules and procedures governing transmission of information between two points in a network. Today corporates are using a single, common, worldwide standard called TCP/IP. TCP: Transmission control protocol: It handles movement of data between computers. It establishes a connection between the computers, sequences the transfer of packets and acknowledges packets sent. IP: Internet Protocol:It is responsible for delivery of packets and includes disassembling and reassembling of packets during transmission. An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, printer) participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. Types of Networks:Local Area Networks A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building using network media.

A LAN is designed to connect personal computers and other digital devices within a half mile or 500 meter radius. LANs typically connect a few computers in several buildings in close proximity. LANs can link to long distance wide area networks and other networks around the world using the Internet.

How LAN can be connected to other networks?

Which are the common LAN operating systems? Which is their default networking protocol?

Sometimes LANs are described in terms of the way their components are connected together.

There are three major LAN topologies: star, bus and ring.

Star topology A star topology is a topology for a Local Area Network (LAN) in which all nodes are individually connected to a central connection point, like a hub or a switch.

Bus topology A bus topology network is a network architecture in which a set of clients are connected via a shared communications line, called a bus. The bus topology is often referred to as a "linear bus" because the computers are connected in a straight line. This is the simplest and most common method of networking computers. Ring Topology

A ring topology connects the LAN computers one after the other on the wire in a physical circle. The ring topology moves information on the wire in one direction and is considered an active topology. Computers on the network actually retransmit the packets (packet is a generic term for the chunks of data that are being moved along the network) they receive and then send them on to the next computer in the ring.

A Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is a large computer network that usually spans a city or a large campus. A MAN is similar to a local area network (LAN) in a sense that it connects computers together in a certain area. A MAN is on a much larger scale than a LAN, however it does not cover as large of an area as a wide area network (WAN). A LAN is used in office buildings, schools, and rooms, a MAN is used primarily in cities, and a WAN is used over a state, province or country. A WAN Wide Area Network spans a large geographic area, such as a state, province or country. WANs often connect multiple smaller networks, such as local area networks (LANs) or metro area networks (MANs). The world's most popular WAN is the Internet. What is an Internet? What is an ISP?

ISPs most commonly connect via traditional telephone line and modem but it is quickly being replaced by broadband connections. DSL ,cable, satellite internet connections and T lines provide these broadband services.

DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) technologies operate over existing telephone lines to carry voice, data and video at transmission rates ranging from 385 Kbps up to 9 Mbps. Cable Internet connections provided by cable television vendors use digital cable coaxial lines to deliver high speed internet access.

In areas where DSL and cable services are unavailable , it is possible to access the Internet via satellite, although it usually has slower speed than other broadband services. T lines which includes T1 and T3 lines are international telephone standards for digital communication. They are leased, dedicated lines suitable for businesses or government agencies requiring high speed guaranteed service levels. T1 lines offer guaranteed delivery at 1.54 Mbps and T3 lines offer delivery at 45 Mbps. Internet Architecture: The Domain Name System A Domain Name system of DNS converts IP addresses to domain names. The domain name is the English like name that corresponds to the unique 32-bit numeric IP address for each computer connected to the Internet. DNS servers maintain a database containing IP addresses mapped to their corresponding domain names. To access a computer on the internet, users need only specify its domain name. Eg. Of domain names include:

.com commercial organizations/businesses .edu Educational institutions .gov U.S government agencies

.org Nonprofit organizations and foundations .biz - business firms .info- information providers Internet data traffic is carried over transcontinental high speed backbone networks that generally operate today in the range of 45Mbps to 2.5 Gbps. These trunk lines are typically owned by long distance telephone companies or by national governments. Local connection lines are owned by regional telephone and cable television companies in the U.S that connect retail users in homes and businesses to the internet. The regional networks lease access to ISPs, private companies and government institutions.

Each organization pays for its own networks and its own local Internet connection services, a part of which is paid to the long distance trunk Individual internet users pay ISPs for using their services. Who owns Internet? Professional organizations and government bodies such as Internet Architecture Board (IAB), The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which assigns IP addresses and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which sets HTML and other programing standards for the web. These organizations influence government agencies, network owners, ISPs and software developers with the goal of keeping the Internet operating as efficiently as possible. Internet services and communication tools:E-mail Chatting and Instant Messaging

Newsgroups Telnet File Transfer Protocol World Wide Web

Unified Communications: In the past, each of the firms networks for wired and wireless data, voice communications, and videoconferencing operated independently of each other and had to be managed separately by the information systems departments. Now, firms are able to merge disparate communication modes in to a single universally accessible service using unified communications technology. It integrates disparate channels for voice communications, data communications, instant messaging, email and electronic conferencing into a single experience where users can seamlessly switch back and forth between different communication modes. Virtual Private Networks: A VPN is a secure, encrypted, private network that has been configured within a public network to take advantage of the economies of scale and management facilities of large networks, such as the Internet.

A VPN provides a firm with a secure, encrypted communications at a much lower cost than the same capabilities offered by the traditional non internet providers. VPN also provide a network infrastructure for combining voice and data networks. Hypertext:

Web pages are accessible through the internet because Web browser software operating your computer can request Web pages stored on Internet host server using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP is a communication standard used to transfer pages on the web.

What is URL or uniform resource locator?

When typed into a browser, a URL tells the browser software exactly where to look for the information. For eg. http://www.yahoo.com/content/features/abc.html Web Servers: A web server is software for locating and managing stored web pages. It locates the web pages requested by a user on the computer where they are stored and delivers the web pages to the users computer.

Eg. Apache HTTP server which controls 70% of the market. Microsofts Internet Information Services is occupies 21% of the market share. Intelligent Agent Shopping Bots: Shopping bots are price comparison sites on the World Wide Web that automatically search the inventory of several different online merchants to find the lowest prices for consumers. Typically, these sites rank products by price and allow shoppers to link directly to an online merchant's site to actually make a purchase. Many shopping bots also include links to product reviews from evaluation sites like Gomez.com and Bizrate.com.

One of the most popular shopping bots, mySimon.com, culls the offerings of more than 2,000 e-tailers using its Virtual Learning Agent software, for which a patent is pending. Users can either search for a specific product by keyword or browse several product categories including apparel, books, consumer electronics, movies, and wireless products. Searches result in a listing of products that can be sorted by various criteria including price, merchant ratings, and manufacturers.

To change the way information is sorted, shoppers can simply click on a different category heading. Shoppers who reach a decision about which item they wish to purchase begin the transaction by clicking the "buy" button located beside each product. They then are routed to the Web site selling the item, where they can complete their purchase. mySimon.com offers its shopping bot service free to users.

Web 2.0 is a loosely defined intersection of web application features that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, web applications, mashups and RSS. A mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services. What is RSS?

RSS content is also referred to as feed and a feed is simply a way in which a reader may subscribe to website content, such as a blog or news site. A news site, for example, may list the latest headlines or entire articles in their feed every time a new article is published. A blog could publish a feed that contains a series of recent posts. Feeds are published by millions of publishers, from small individuals to large organizations like Computer Weekly and New Scientist. Using RSS can consolidate many data sources and stop the need for you to constantly visit many different sites to access the information you want. In this way you will be able to keep up to date with specific information you are interested in without having to visit each individual site. With all the information in one location you can see the updated content change when it happens on a daily or hourly basis for example.

Intranet An intranet is an internal organizational network that provides access to data across the enterprise. It uses the existing company infrastructure along with Internet connectivity standards and software developed for the world wide web. Intranets create networked applications that can run on many handheld computers and wireless remote access devices. Intranet is private and protected from public visits by firewalls. Extranets A firm creates an extranet to allow authorized vendors and customers to have limited access to its internal intranet. For eg, authorized buyers could link to a portion of companys intranet from the public Internet to obtain information about the costs and features of the companys products.

The company uses firewalls to ensure that access to its internal data is limited and remains secure. Firewalls also authenticate users, making sure that only authorized users access the site. Both intranets and extranets reduce operational costs by providing the connectivity to coordinate disparate business processes within the firm and to link electronically to customers and suppliers. Extranets are often employed for collaborating with other companies for supply chain management, product design and development and training efforts. The Web 3.0 Semantic Web.

Web 3.0 is the promise of a future web where all the digital information, all the contacts can be woven together into a single meaningful experience. There is already a lot of work going into the idea of a semantic web, which is a web where all information is categorized and stored in such a way that a computer can understand it as well as a human. Many view this as a combination of artificial intelligence and the semantic web. The semantic web will teach the computer what the data means, and this will evolve into artificial intelligence that can utilize that information.

Bluetooth is a specification for the use of low-power radio communications to wirelessly link phones, computers and other network devices over short distances. Bluetooth technology was designed primarily to support simple wireless networking of personal consumer devices and peripherals, including cell phones, PDAs, and wireless headsets. Wireless signals transmitted with Bluetooth cover short distances, typically up to 30 feet (10 meters). Bluetooth devices generally transmit up to 722 kbps in the 2.4 GHz band.

Wireless phones, pagers, computers, printers and computing devices using Bluetooth communicate with each other and even operate each other without direct user intervention. For eg. A person could direct a notebook computer to send a document file wirelessly to a printer. Bluetooth connects wireless keyboards and mice to PCs or cell phones to earpieces without wires. Bluetooth has low power requirements, making it appropriate for battery powered handheld computers, cell phones or PDAs.

WI FI A wireless network uses radio waves, just like cell phones, televisions and radios do. The radios used for WiFi communication are very similar to the radios used for walkie-talkies, cell phones and other devices. They can transmit and receive radio waves, and they can convert 1s and 0s into radio waves and convert the radio waves back into 1s and 0s. But WiFi radios have a few notable differences from other radios:

They transmit at frequencies of 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz. This frequency is considerably higher than the frequencies used for cell phones, walkie-talkies and televisions. The higher frequency allows the signal to carry more data. They use 802.11 networking standards, which come in several flavors: 802.11a transmits at 5 GHz and can move up to 54 megabits of data per second 802.11b is the slowest and least expensive standard. For a while, its cost made it popular, but now it's becoming less common as faster standards become less expensive. 802.11b transmits in the 2.4 GHz frequency band of the radio spectrum. It can handle up to 11 megabits of data per second, 802.11g transmits at 2.4 GHz like 802.11b, but it's a lot faster -- it can handle up to 54 megabits of data per second.

802.11n is the newest standard that is widely available. This standard significantly improves speed and range. For instance, although 802.11g theoretically moves 54 megabits of data per second, it only achieves real-world speeds of about 24 megabits of data per second because of network congestion.

WiMAX is an acronym meaning "Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX).

WiMAX is a wireless digital communications system, also known as IEEE 802.16, that is intended for wireless "metropolitan area networks". WiMAX can provide broadband wireless access (BWA) up to 30 miles (50 km) In contrast, the WiFi/802.11 wireless local area network standard is limited in most cases to only 100 300 feet (30 - 100m).

A wireless sensor network is a collection of nodes organized into a cooperative network. A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous devices that use sensors to monitor physical or environmental conditions. Each node consists of processing capability, may contain multiple types of memory and have a power source. Its applications include environmental, medical, military, transportation, entertainment, crisis management etc. In structural health monitoring, you can use wireless sensors to effectively monitor highways, bridges, and tunnels. You also can deploy these systems to continually monitor office buildings, hospitals, airports, factories, power plants, or production facilities.

E-Commerce and The Internet E-commerce refers to the use of Internet and the Web to transact business.

E-commerce is about digitally enabled commercial transactions between and among organizations and individuals .

Commercial transactions involve the exchange of value (Eg. Money) across organizational or individual boundaries in return for products and services.

Eight Unique features of E-commerce Technology:

1. Ubiquity E-commerce is available everywhere, at all times. It is a market space extended beyond traditional boundaries and removed from a temporal and geographic location.

What are the advantages of ubiquity from customer point of view? 2. Global Reach

It permits commercial transactions to cross cultural and national boundaries far more easily and cost effectively than is true in traditional commerce.

Whats its Market size????

How its opposite to traditional commerce??? Universal Standards

Technical standards for the internet and, therefore, the technical standards for conducting ecommerce are universal standards. How its opposite to traditional commerce???

Advantages include lower market entry costs and search costs.

4. Richness

Information richness refers to the complexity and content of a message. Traditional markets, national sale forces and small retail stores have great richness. Prior to the development of web there was a trade off between richness and reach. The web makes it possible to deliver rich messages with text, audio and video simultaneously to large numbers of people.

5. Interactivity

Interactivity allows an online merchant to engage a consumer in ways similar to a face-toface experience but on a massive, global scale.

How its opposite to traditional commerce???

6. Information Density

It means the total amount and quality of information available to all market participants, consumers and merchants alike. E-commerce technologies reduce information collection, storage, processing and communication costs while greatly increasing the currency, accuracy and timeliness of information. Advantages include Price transparency, cost transparency and price discrimination.

7. Personalization/Customization

Personalization means merchants can target their marketing message to specific individuals by adjusting the message to a persons name, interests and past purchases.

Customization means changing the delivered product or service based on a users preferences or prior behavior.

With the increase in information density, a great deal of information about the consumers past purchases and behavior can be stored and used by online merchants. 8. Social Technology: User Content Generation and Social Networking E-commerce allows users to create and share with their personal friends and community content in the form of text, videos, music or photos. Using these forms of communications, users are able to create new social networks and strengthen existing ones. Users can create and distribute content on a large scale, and permit users to program their own content consumption.

Traditional commerce uses one-to-many model of mass communication where as the Internet provides a many-to-many model of mass communications which is unique.

Digital markets

In a digital market place, millions of people are able to exchange massive amounts of information directly, instantly and for free.

They shrink information asymmetry.

In digital markets, consumers and suppliers can see the prices being charged for goods, and in that sense digital markets are said to be more transparent

Eg. Auto dealers and consumers

Consumers turn to the convenience of the Internet when it comes to researching and buying products.

Digital markets reduce transaction costs and search costs, Allow the ability to change prices dynamically based on market conditions. These markets may cause some extra delay in gratification.

They provide many opportunities to sell directly to the consumer, bypassing intermediaries, such as distributors or retail outlets. By selling directly to consumers or reducing the number of intermediaries, companies are able to raise profits while charging lower prices. The removal of organizations or business process layers responsible for intermediary steps in a value chain is called disintermediation.

Digital goods: Digital goods are goods that can be delivered over a digital network. Eg. Music tracks, Video , software ,newspapers , magazines and books

Compare digital goods and traditional goods on below parameters: Marginal cost/unit Cost of production Copying cost Inventory cost Marketing cost Pricing

Internet Business Models: 1. Virtual Storefront: Sells physical products directly to consumers or to individual businesses. Eg. Amazon.com 2. Information Broker Provides product, pricing and availability information to individuals and businesses. Generates revenue from advertising or from directing buyers to sellers. Eg. Insweb.com

Transaction Broker:

Saves users money and time by processing online sales transactions and generating a fee each time a transaction occurs. Eg. Etrade.com Online Marketplace: Provides a digital environment where buyers and sellers can meet, search for products, display products and establish prices for these products. Can provide online auctions in which buyers submit bids to multiple sellers. Eg. Ebay.com Content Provider: Creates revenue by providing digital content, such as digital news, music,photos or video over the web. The customer may pay to access the content or revenue many be generated by selling advertising space.

Eg. iTunes.com Games.com Social Network:

Portal: Provides initial point of entry to the web along with specialized content and other services. Revenue derives from advertising. Eg. Yahoo.com

A web portal is a web site that brings together information from diverse sources in a unified way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information (a portlet); often, the user can configure which ones to display.

Service Provider: Provides Web 2.0 applications such as photo sharing, video sharing and user generated content as services. Provide other services such as online data storage and backup. Eg. Google Maps, Photobucket.com YouTube.com

Types of E-Commerce:1. Business to Consumer E-commerce: It involves retailing products and services to individual shoppers. Eg. Flipkart, Indiatimes.com

2. Business to business E-commerce: Involves sale of goods and services among businesses. It creates a platform where buyer and sellers come across for the purpose of business.

A b2b portal consists of lakhs of registered members who are looking for business. Either they register themselves to buy a product or to sell their product.

It makes the business cycle very fast as every finest detail of registered members including their product is displayed for 24 hours X 365 days.

Any person from any part of the world can access such information via internet and can contact at their ease.

It also curtails the travelling and makes the reach of buyers and sellers more expeditious .Since with b2b portal the saying that the entire world is for business becomes true.

Eg. TradeIndia.com Consumer to consumer E-commerce: Consumer-to-consumer e commerce is the practice of individual consumers buying and selling goods via the Internet. The most common type of this form of transaction comes via auction sites, although online forums and classifieds also offer this type of commerce to consumers. In most cases, consumer-to-consumer e commerce, also known as C2C e commerce, is helped along by a third party who officiates the transaction to make sure goods are received and payments are made. This offers some protection for consumers partaking in C2C ecommerce. Auction websites, like the extremely popular eBay, have recently sprung up all over the Internet and represent the most popular form of consumer-to-consumer e commerce. On an auction site, one consumer will post the item or items for sale, and then other users will bid on the items. The user who comes up with the highest price in the allotted time for the sale will receive the item in question. In addition, many auction sites also allow the users to rate the quality of the items bought from a certain seller, thereby showing the reliability of those offering the items for sale.

Other sites exist that are devoted to the process of consumer-to-consumer e commerce. Online classified sites work just like the typical classified ad in a newspaper.

One user puts up an ad describing the goods or services being offered and the desired price, and other users seeking those goods or services can respond. Another possibility is an online forum that is devoted to a specific type of product or service, although consumers may have a harder time researching the reliability of sites like this.

Achieving Customer Intimacy: Interactive Marketing, Personalization and Self Service: Interactive Marketing and Personalization: The internet and e-commerce have helped some merchants achieve the holy grail of marketing: Making products for millions of consumers that are personal Web sites such as that for Lands End (shirts and pants), Nike (athletic shoes) and VistaPrint feature online tools to purchase products tailored to their individual specifications. Companies obtain some customer information by asking them to register online but many companies also collect customer information using software tools that track activities of website visitors. Clickstream tracking tools collect data on customer activities at web sites and store them in a log. These tools record the site that users visited prior to coming to a particular web site and where these users go when they leave that site. They also record the specific pages visited on a particular site, the time spent on each page, types of pages visited and what visitors purchased.

Firms analyze this information about customer interests and behavior to develop precise profiles of existing and potential customers.

Other technique for web personalization is known as collaborative filtering, which compares information gathered about a specific users behavior at a web site to data about other customers with similar interests to predict what the user would like to see next. Blogs and Wikis: Blogs are either hosted by a third party site or bloggers can download software to create a blog. The content of blogs range from individual musings to corporate communications. Blogs have a significant impact on political affairs and have gained increasing notice for their role in breaking and shaping the news. Companies that maintain public blogs use them as a new channel for reaching customers. Readers are often invited to post comments. Eg. Huggies India Marketers are analyzing blogs as well as chat groups and message boards to see what is being said online about new products, old brands and ad campaigns. Blog watching can be cheaper and faster for analyzing consumer interests and sentiment than traditional focus groups and surveys. Companies are posting ads on some of the most popular blogs published by individuals or by other organizations. Customer Self Service: Many companies use their web sites and email to answer customer questions or to provide customers with product information, reducing the need for human customer support expert. For eg. American, Northwest and other major airlines have created websites where customers can review flight departure and arrival times, seating charts and purchase tickets online.

New software products are even integrating the web with customer call centers, where customer service problems have been traditionally handled over telephone. For eg. Visitors to the Lands End Web site can request a phone call from customer service by entering his or her telephone number. A call center system directs a customer service representative to place a voice call to the users phone. B2B E commerce: New efficiencies and Relationship EDI or Electronic Data Interchange: Electronic data interchange (EDI) is the structured transmission of data between organizations by electronic means. It is used to transfer electronic documents or business data from one computer system to another computer system, i.e. from one trading partner to another trading partner without human intervention. Examples include invoices, bills of lading, shipment schedules or purchase orders. Firms engaged in Just In time inventory replenishment and continuous production use EDI as a system for continuous replenishment. Suppliers have online access to selected parts of the purchasing firms production and delivery schedules and automatically ship materials and goods to meet prespecified targets without intervention by firm purchasing agents.

What is a private Industrial Network? It consist of a large firm using an extranet to link to its suppliers and other key business partners. The network is owned by the buyer, and it permits the firm and designated suppliers, distributors and other business partners to share product design and development, marketing, production scheduling, inventory management and unstructured communication.

It is also known as private Exchange Net marketplaces: They are also known as e-hubs. They provide a single digital marketplace for many different buyers and sellers. They generate revenue from purchase and sale transactions and other services provided to clients. Participants in Net Marketplaces can establish prices through online negotiations, auctions or request for quotations or they can use fixed prices. Some Net marketplaces sell direct goods and some sell indirect goods. Some of them support contractual purchasing based on long term relationship with designated suppliers and others support short term purchasing.

Some Net marketplaces serve vertical markets for specific industries such as automobiles, telecomm etc where as others serve horizontal markets for goods and services that can be found in many different industries, such as office equipment or transportation. Exchanges are independently owned third party Net marketplaces that connect thousands of buyers and suppliers for spot purchasing. For eg. FoodTrader.com automates spot purchases among buyers and sellers from more than 180 countries in food and agriculture industry.