World Wide Web and Business Community Essay Example for Free

World Wide Web and Business Community Essay The World Wide Web (abbreviated as WWW or W3, commonly known as the Web), is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia, and navigate between them via hyperlinks. Using concepts from his earlier hypertext systems like ENQUIRE, British engineer, computer scientist and at that time employee of CERN, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), wrote a proposal in March 1989 for what would eventually become the World Wide Web. At CERN, a European research organisation near Geneva situated on Swiss and French soil, Berners-Lee and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use hypertext to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will, and they publicly introduced the project in December of the same year. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the same. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the Web is one of the services that run on the Internet. It is a collection of text documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs, usually accessed by web browsers from web servers. In short, the Web can be thought of as an application running on the Internet. The internet not only is a perfect medium for communication between people across the globe but also is fast becoming a preferred medium of business transactions. E-commerce is thus the tool to which big business giants of the globe are resorting to conduct their business. This does not mean that the smaller businesses are at a disadvantage. They too make full utility of it. It does not difficult to imagine the potential of the web to identify the vast market potential available. The Internet and, more particularly, the WWW are attracting businesses in their thousands, with the following appearing to be the main application areas: Publicity, Marketing and Advertising The WWW appears to be an ideal medium for businesses attempting to promote themselves and their wares. Setting up a site on the WWW, and thus gaining instant access to millions of people all over the globe, can be achieved at  a small fraction of the cost using more conventional methods (Watson, 1994). Direct On-line Selling It is already possible to visit ‘virtual malls’ full of ‘virtual shops’, browse through catalogues and examine various products in vast detail, all courtesy of the Web. This has all been made possible by the multi-media capabilities that the Web provides (Minio, 1994). Research and Development Companies, especially those involved in research and development can use the Internet as an additional resource for collecting information. Tetzeli (1994) explains how it is possible to post a query on a bulletin board or join a discussion group and receive advice on how to solve the problem. Alternatively, there are millions of Web pages, some of which contain access to searchable databases of information relating to particular subjects. Communication The use of low-cost electronic mail (e-mail) is the Internet service used most extensively by businesses (Rosen, 1994). Kehoe (1994) illustrates the strength of e-mail with the example of ‘Digital Equipment’ which has over 31,000 computers linked up to the Internet and exchanges about 1.7 million e-mail messages each month with people external to the company. INTERNET The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (often called TCP/IP, although not all applications use TCP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email. Internet protocol suite (often called TCP/IP, although not all applications use TCP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government  networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email. EXPLORING CYBERWORLD INTERNET WORKING CONCEPTS Computers, which are connected with internet, can communicate because of protocols. There are two protocols for working with the internet. These are: * Internet Protocol (IP) * Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Each and every computer system has an internet address to connect with internet. The computers are linked with a centralized storage medium, which is called server. This server stores all software programs and data. The computers linked with this server are called clients. When a client sends data / message over the internet, this is broken into small pieces using the TCP protocol. These small pieces are called packets. Each packet contains the information (address) of the destination and sender, this address is called IP address. These various packets are sent to the destination by the fastest possible path using devices called routers. The destination TCP software assembles all the packets to form a complete message. Hardware/Software Requirement for Internet connection The following hardware and software requirements should be met with for an internet connection. * Pentium computer with 128 MB, 256 MB or 512 MB RAM. Higher the RAM, faster is the connectivity. * Modem with 56 KBP data transmission speed * Windows interface like windows98, windows2000, windows XP etc. * CD ROM drive. * High storage hard disk 80 GB or more. * Telephone connection * TCP/IP internet account from internet service provider * Antivirus program to scan the viruses, which may come into your computer while downloading software or data from internet. Baud Baud is the unit of measuring speed of data transmission. It is measured in bits per second the higher the baud rates the more data the device can transmit per second. The amount of data that can be transferred in a single pulse/symbol will depend on the type of data transmission system being used. Bandwidth Bandwidth is the information carrying capacity of a communication channel. The channel may be analog or digital. In electronic communication, bandwidth is the width of the range of frequencies that an electronic signal uses on a given transmission medium. In this usage, bandwidth is expressed in terms of the difference between the highest frequency signal component and the lowest frequency signal component. Since the frequency of a signal is measured in hertz, a given bandwidth is the difference in hertz between the highest frequencies the signal uses lowest frequency it uses. A typical voice signal has a bandwidth of approximately three kilohertz; an analog television broadcast video signal has a bandwidth of six megahertz – some 2,000 times as wide as the voice signal. Data Transfer Rate The data transfer rate is commonly used to measure how fast data is transferred from one location to another it is the amount of digital data that is moved from one place to another in a given time. The data transfer rate can be viewed as the speed of travel of a given amount of data from one place to another. In general, the greater the bandwidth of a given path, the higher the data transfer rate. In telecommunication, data transfers in bit are usually measured per second. Measuring data transfer rate Bits are typically used in data transfer rates and bytes are used to indicate storage space. A lowercase b is used to signify bits and uppercase B is used to represent bytes. Data transfer rates on computer networks are measured in bits per second or bytes per second, with a byte equalling 8 bits. Megabits per second is written as Mbps and gigabytes per second is denoted as GBps. An Ethernet local area network (LAN) can feature data transfer rates of 10 Mbps, while some internet server boast data transfer rates measuring in GBps. Bits and Bytes Bits and bytes are the units of measure for data transfer rate and storage capacity. We generally use bits for measuring the speed of data transfer. All standard devices show the speed in bits per second. Wireless Network Wireless network refers to any type of computer network that is not connected by cables of any kind. It is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and enterprise (business) installations avoid the costly process of introducing cables into a building, or as a connection between various equipment locations. Wireless telecommunications networks are generally implemented and administered using radio communication. This implementation takes place at the physical level (layer) of the OSI model network structure. Wireless internet is the easy way to access internet without the need for a landline. It allows you to stay in touch whilst being on the move. Just plug your USB modem into your computer for an instant internet connection to take with you on the move. Mobile IP The Mobile IP protocol allows location-independent routing of IP datagram on the Internet. Each mobile node is identified by its home address disregarding its current location in the Internet. While away from its home network, a mobile node is associated with a care-of address which identifies its current location and its home address is associated with the local endpoint of a tunnel to its home agent. Mobile IP specifies how a mobile node registers with its home agent and how the home agent routes datagrams to the mobile node through the tunnel. Mobile TCP Mobile TCP is software for forwarding SMTP server connections to the correct server, made for people travelling with a laptop, connecting to different networks. This program features the ability to check either external IP number or internal and forwarding SMTP connections to the correct SMTP server. With this program it is easy to copy your current IP numbers to the clipboard and the status window shows witch networks you have been connected to and when you sent e-mail. GPRS General packet radio service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data  service on the 2G and 3G cellular communication systems global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was originally standardized by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode packet-switched cellular technologies. It is now maintained by the3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). GPRS usage is typically charged based on volume of data transferred, contrasting with circuit switched data, which is usually billed per minute of connection time. GPRS data may be sold either as part of a bundle (e.g., up to 5 GB per month for a fixed fee) or on a pay-as-you-use basis. Usage above the bundle cap is either charged per megabyte or disallowed. GPRS is a best-effort service, implying variable throughput and latency that depend on the number of other users sharing the service concurrently, as opposed to circuit switching, where a certain quality of service (QoS) is guaranteed during the connection. In 2G systems, GPRS provides data rates of 56–114 Kbit/second. 2G cellular technology combined with GPRS is sometimes described as 2.5G, that is, a technology between the second (2G) and third (3G) generations of mobile telephony. It provides moderate-speed data transfer, by using unused time division multiple access (TDMA) channels in, for example, the GSM system. Web Service A Web service is a method of communication between two electronic devices over the World Wide Web. A Web service is a software function provided at a network address over the web or the cloud, it is a service that is always on as in the concept of utility computing. The W3C defines a Web service as a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-process able format (specifically Web Services Description Language, known by the acronym WSDL). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards. The W3C also states, We can identify two major classes of Web services, REST-compliant Web services, in which the primary purpose of the service is to manipulate XML representations of Web resources using a  uniform set of stateless operations; and arbitrary Web services, in which the service may expose an arbitrary set of operations. Search Engines A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be a specialist in web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike web directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time information by running an algorithm on a web crawler. Examples on Search Engines 1. www.google.com 2. www.yahoo.com 3. www.altavista.com 4. www.excite.com 5. www.search.com 6. www.dogpile.com Keyword Searching A Keyword search looks for words anywhere in the record. Keyword searches are a good substitute for a subject search when you do not know the authorized subject heading form. Keyword may also be used as a substitute for a title or author search when you have incomplete title or author information. You may also use the Guided Keyword search option to combine search elements, group terms, or select indexes or fields to be searched. Concept based Searching Unlike keyword search systems, concept based search systems try to determine what you mean, not just what you say. In the best circumstances, a concept based search returns hits on documents that are â€Å"about† the subject you’re exploring, even if the words in the document don’t precisely match the word you enter into the query. Excite is currently the best known general purpose search engine site on the web that relies on concept based search. This is known as clustering which is essentially means that words are examined in  relation to other words found nearby. There are various methods of building clustering systems, some of which are highly complex, relaying on sophisticated linguistic and artificial intelligence theory that we won’t even attempt to go into here. Excite sticks to a numerical approach. Excites software determines meaning by calculating the frequency with which certain important words appear. When several words or phrases that are tagged to signal a particular concept appear close to each other in a text, the search engine concludes, by statistical analysis that the piece is â€Å"about† a certain subject. Refining Your Search Most sites offer two different types of searches – â€Å"basic† and â€Å"advanced†. In a â€Å"basic† search, you just enter a keyword without sifting through any pull down menus of additional options. Depending on the engine, though, â€Å"basic† searches can be quite complex. Advanced search refining options differ from one search engine to another, but some of the possibilities includes the ability to search on more than one word, to give more weight to one search term than you give to another and to exclude words that might be likely to muddy the results. You might also be able to search on proper names, on phrases and on words that are found within a certain proximity to other search terms. Many search engines now automatically recognize company names and can direct a searcher to a corporate website when such a name is entered as a query. Phrase recognition is also becoming more common; i.e. , you might expect to get relevant hits for the term cold war if you enter it without the quotation markets that typically denotes a phrases. Downloading These are tools that keep track of many web sites around the world and let you search for particular items whenever you want. The result of search is a custom list of links, pointing to whatever items the search engine found that met your criteria.