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Lecture 2
Infrastructure for E-Commerce
If rules are broken, collisions take place. Network services layer in
a railway system provides reservations for passengers, facilities to
transport goods, etc.
We require languages to compose messages which can be interpreted by
computers. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Extensible
Markup Language (XML) provide this facility.
We call the next layer middleman services. They are essentially services
provided to e-commerce participants to make their dealings easier.
In our railway analogy, a travel agent who books your railway
tickets saving you a trip to the railway station provides middleman
services. In e-commerce some important middleman services are
secure payments using credit cards, imitating cash payments for small
purchases.
All the services provided by the layers described above are essential
to support our applications, namely, B2C, B2B and C2C e-commerce.
This is thus the top layer (namely, application layer) in our layered
architecture.
LOCAL AREA NETWORK
The message will have a header giving the address off the destination
computer. It is now NIC's responsibility to transmit the message to the
specified destination.
Such delegation of work by a computer allows computers with widely
divergent speeds to communicate with one another in an orderly fashion.
The NIC may thus have wrongly assumed that there is no signal in
the cable. If by chance another message was already being carried by
the cable when an NIC put its message in it, the two messages will
collide and both will be spoiled.
Thus, the sending NIC's receiver must listen to signals in the cable
for a period of time slightly larger than the time needed for a
message from the most distant NIC's transmitter to reach it to detect
collision.
If a collision is detected by a NIC, it sends a jamming signal in the
cable so that all NICs connected to it know that a collision has occurred.
When this occurs both the NICs which had put messages in the cable
must retransmit.
We have seen so far what is known as a LAN segment, that is, a set
of computers connected by using one hub typically in one -department.
The number of computers in such a LAN segment will be less than 32
and the maximum distance will be restricted to around 100 metres.
These LAN segments should be connected to enable
communication between departments. For example, a purchase
office may have its own LAN with 16 computers and an accounts
office another LAN with 24 computers.
After a purchase order is executed and goods are taken into stock,
the purchase office must inform the accounts office that the vendor’s
bill may be paid. This information is normally sent from a computer
in the purchase office LAN to one in the accounts office LAN which
is possible only if the two LANs are interconnected.
Interconnecting LAN Segments
All the hubs in this configuration are simple as they merely amplify
and retransmit a message received by them on all other connections. In
this design all LAN segments are virtually merged as one LAN.
Collision probability increases as the number of computers connected to
Hub BB increases.
As long as the total number of computers connected to the
backbone is smaller than about 40, this method is satisfactory.
When the total number of computers to be connected using a
backbone connection is larger than 40, use of a backbone hub may lead
to too many collisions and consequent reduction of speed of
communication between computers.
In such a case instead of using a backbone hub to connect LAN
segments we use what is known as a backbone bridge (Figure 2.5).
A bridge has features to examine each message packet which
arrives and determines its destination address. It stores a table which
tells the addresses of computers on each of the hubs.
In other words, in the telephone line voice signals and digital
communications from PC can be simultaneously sent as they are in
two different bands which are widely separated and thus will not
interfere with one another.
Normally most users download lot more data than they send to
ISP. Thus, data speed from home PC to ISP is usually limited to 256
Kbps and from ISP to home PC is around 1 Mbps.
WIRELESS NETWORKS
Users can install a receiving dish antenna to receive signals broadcast from a
satellite at their premises. Satellite digital radio broadcasts and television
broadcasts are now available and they can be received by very small dishes
(around 20 cm diameter for radio and 1 m diameter for TV reception) as their
bandwidth is small.
• Satellite radio stations provide data links of 64 Kbps for
broadcasting digital data from an organization to multiple
recipients.