Unit 2: The Network

Infrastructure for E-Commerce

Prepared By
Mekh Raj Poudel @ JMC, Pokhara
Information Superhighway (i-way)
• Information superhighway is the basic infrastructure on which
information travel in e-commerce.
• i-way must be a broadband communication line that means a line
with higher bandwidth / capacity.
• It must provide two way communication in error free environment. i-
way not only used for information transfer but also used for
communication and entertainment purpose
• i-way is the most essential infrastructure for e-commerce without
which no commercial transaction is possible online
• The information super highway may be defined as a high capacity,
electronic pipeline to a consumer or business premise that is capable
of simultaneously supporting a large number of e-commerce
applications and providing interactive connectivity between users and
services.
• The I-way has emerged as the basic network infrastructure for all
types of e-commerce activities due to its capability to provide
integrate voice, data and video services.
Components of i-way
Components of the I-way
It consist or various components which can be broadly categorized as;
1. Network access equipment
2. Local-on-Ramps (Access media)
3. Global information distribution networks
1. Network access equipment
• These are the equipments used by the customers and businesses to
access the Internet and to participate in a commercial transactions.
• So at the consumer end, they enables the consumer to access the
network. It consists of the hardware such as computers, PDA,
smartphones, tablet, modems, routers, switches for computer
networks, set-top boxes for television networks and software
platforms such as browsers and operating systems.
• Mostly these are not considered as the internal components of the i-
way
2. Local-on-Ramps
• It is the access path of information that links multiple businesses and
consumers. It is the medium used by consumers and business to
communicate with each other and to exchange information.
• The access roads is the way in which the consumer homes and work places
are linked with the backbone of the network infrastructure for e-
commerce. These can be categorized into four major types;
--Telecom based Infrastructure
--Cable TV based Infrastructure
--Wireless based Infrastructure
-- Commercial online Infrastructure (Internet, intranet and extranet)
• Each of these access media has its own benefits and limitations and is
faced with a number of challenges in this fast growing world e-commerce.
• Telecom based: The telecom industry provides both long distance and
local telephone services for e-commerce applications. The telecom
companies provide a high speed pipeline capable for carrying high
volumes of interactive voice, data and video to homes and businesses
connect these to the global information distribution networks, the
backbone of the i-way.
• Cable TV based: The cable TV network provides a popular media for
pushing high speed data to homes. Statistics have shown that cable
runs through 90 percent of the US homes today and still has a lot of
unutilized capacity. The cable TV based networks may be wired or
wireless.
• Wireless Infrastructure: The wireless operators are typically radio based.
The wireless based systems have revolutionized the ways of thinking about
information delivery. The cellular technology today has also facilitated the
multimedia services. Internet connectivity using the cellular networks has
been made possible. The cellular networks using the analog technology are
now upgrading to digital networks to provide greater capacity at lower
costs as well as increase the quality and functionality of the cellular
network.
• Commercial online Infrastructure: The internet forms a well known
component of the global information distribution network. It targets a
wide range of e-commerce applications such as video on demand, home
shopping, e-mail, EDI, information publishing, information retrieval, video
conferencing and many more.
3. Global Information Distribution Networks
• The global information distribution networks consist of the infrastructure
crossing the countries and continents. They include the long distance
telephone lines, satellite networks, and the internet.
• Long distance telephone connectivity is provided through cable by the
inter-exchange carriers. Long distance cellular networks are using the
wireless technologies to connect the consumers worldwide.
• Satellite networks play a vital role in the communication industry. They
have advantages over the terrestrial networks in that:
a. They are accessible from any point of the globe.
b. They can provide broad band digital services to many points without the
cost of acquiring wire/cable installation.
c. They can add receiving and sending sites without significant additional
costs.
What is the Internet?
• The Internet is the network of networks or interconnected networks used
to connect a large number of networks worldwide. It is generally used for
exchanging information worldwide.
• Internet is a huge collection of the different kind of computer
networks having different protocols and transmission media.
• It is the network of network and spread throughout the world .
• It consist of the voluminous amount of information so it is called the
huge information highway. The information are stored in the form of
websites which can be access by anybody through out the world so it is
called a public network.
• It is public unsecured network basically used for exchanging information
worldwide. It is the effective means of communication.
Popular uses of the Internet
• Surf: Point and click your way to thousand of hyperlinked websites and resources for
multimedia information ,entertainment or electronic commerce.
• E-mail: Use e-mail and instant messaging to exchange electronic message with
colleagues ,friend , and other internet devices.
• Discuss: Participate in discussion forums or post messages on bulletin board systems
formed by thousand of special-interest newsgroups.
• Chat: Hold real-time text conversation in text websites chat rooms with internet users
around the world.
• Buy and sell: You can buy and sell practically anything via e-commerce retailers
,wholesalers , service provider and online auctions.
• Compute: Log on to and use thousands of computer systems around the world.
• Download: Transfer data files, software, reports, articles, pictures, music, videos and
other types of files to your computer.
• Gaming
Business Use of the Internet
Inventory
Management DB
Headquarters System

Suppliers

The Internet

Business Customers Remote Offices

Partners

Fig: Examples of how a company can use the internet for business
Business Use of the Internet
• Business use of the internet has expanded from an electronic
information exchange to a broad platform for strategic business
application.
• Applications like collaboration among business partners, providing
customers and vendors support and e-commerce have become major
business uses of the Internet.
• Companies are also using the internet technologies for marketing , sales
and customer relationship management applications as well as cross
functional business application and application in engineering,
manufacturing ,human resources and accounting.
• For example the above figure demonstrate how an organization can
use the internet for different business activities.
Business Use of the Internet
• Business Headquarter: In business headquarter , internet websites
enable interactive marketing and e-commerce and collaboration with
customers , prospects and business partners .
• Supplier: Extranet for electronic commerce enables suppliers to access
inventory, to maintain stock and send document using EDI(Electronic
Data Interchange) over secure internet links.
• Business partners: Business partner can use the internet for e-mail , file
transfer ,discussion forums ,and extranet access to internet resources.
• Customers: Customers can shop at e-commerce websites for products
and services with interactive service and supports.
• Remote offices: Intranet links with remote employee sites connect
virtual teams for interactive communications , collaborations and
computing .
The Business Value of the Internet
• Most companies are building e-business and e-commerce websites to
achieve six major business values
• Generate revenue from online sales.
• Reduce cost through online sales and customer supports
• Attract new customer via. Web marketing and advertising and online sales
• Increase the loyalty of the existing customers via improved web customer
service and support.
• Develop new web-based markets and distribution channels for existing
products.
• Develop new information based products accessible on the web.
Intranet
• An intranet is a computer network that uses Internet Protocol technology to
share information, operational systems, or computing services within an
organization.
• The term is used in contrast to internet, a network between organizations, and
instead refers to a network within an organization.
• Sometimes, the term refers only to the organization's internal website, but may
be a more extensive part of the organization's information technology
infrastructure, and may be composed of multiple local area networks.
• The objective is to organize each individual's desktop with minimal cost, time and
effort to be more productive, cost efficient, timely, and competitive.
• An Intranet is highly secured environment protected by different securities
measures such as password, encryption, firewall etc., such that they can only be
accessed by authorized users through the internet. A company’s intranet can also
be accessed through the intranet of customer, suppliers and other business
partner through extranet links.
The Role of Intranet
• An intranet is a network inside an organization that uses internet
technologies such as web browser and web servers, TCP/IP and other
protocols, HTML, hypermedia documents and databases etc., to provide an
internet like environment within an organization for information sharing,
communication, collaboration and support of business processes.
• An Intranet is highly secured environment protected by different security
measures such as passwords, encryption, firewall such that they can only
be accessed by authorized users through the Internet.
• A company's intranet can also be accessed through the intranets of
customers, suppliers and other business partners through extranet links.
The Business value of Intranet
• Different services are provided by the intranet portal, browser and server
software as well as by the other system and the application software. Intranets
provide enterprise into portals that support.
1. Communication and Collaboration: Intranet support communication and collaboration
within the organization as well as outside the organization with the help of email, discussion,
forum , chat, video conferencing etc. Intranet uses the existing email and voice mail system in
secure mode.
2. Business operations and management: Intranet provides secure and universal access to view
and use corporate as well as external data. Intranet loses existing database and enterprise
applications in secure mode.
3. Web publishing: Intranet provides the facilities to share and publish hypermedia documents
& those document can be created using HTML, Ms- Office, Java & other web documents.
4. Intranet portal Management: Intranet provides the central administration of client, server
security, directory and traffic management using existing hardware & networks.
• Firewall provides the security to the intranet from the public internet & external
extranet.
The Extranet

• Extranets are the network links that use the Internet technologies to
inter-connect the Intranets of a business with the intranets of its
customers, suppliers, distributors and other business partners.
• Companies can establish direct private network links between
themselves to create private secure internet links between them
known as virtual private networks (VPN).
• Therefore extranet enables customers, suppliers, consultants, sub-
contractors, business partners and others to access selected intranet
websites and other company databases.
Extranet
• Extranet is a restricted network of computers that allows controlled access
to a firm’s internal information to authorized outsiders by connecting them
(usually via internet) to the firm’s intranet.
• The authorized outsiders include costumers, suppliers, joint venture
partner etc.
• It is for specific business or educational purpose.
• A firm creates an extranet to allow authorize vendors and costumers to
have limited access to its internal extranet.
• For example, authorized buyers could link to a portion of a company’s
intranet from the public internet to obtain information about the cost and
features of the company’s product.
• The company uses firewall to ensure that access to its internal data is
limited and remains secure.
Roles of Extranet
• Help people to communicate with others.
• Help to reduce operational costs by providing the connectivity to coordinate
disparate business processes.
• Companies can establish direct private network links between themselves or
create private secure internet link between them known as ‘Virtual Private
Network (VPN)’.
• Exchange large volumes of data using Electron Data Interchange (EDI).
• Collaborate with other companies on joint development efforts.
• Provide or access service provided by one company to a group of other
companies , such as an online banking application managed by one company on
behave of affiliated banks.
• Share product catalogs exclusively with trade partners.
 Fig: Extranet connecting inter-networked enterprise to
consumers, suppliers, business partner and others.

Partners Consumers
consultants,
Contractors

The inter-networked
enterprise

Suppliers
and
Business
Distributors
costumers
Business Value of Extranet
• The web-browser technology of extranet makes customers and suppliers
access of intranet resources, easier and faster than traditional business
methods.
• Extranet enables a company to offer a new kind of interactive web enabled
services to their business partners.
• Extranets are another way that a business can build and improve strategic
relationships with its customers and suppliers.
• Extranet facilitated an online, interactive product development, marketing
and customer-focused process that can bring customized products and
services to markets.
• Extranet plays a prominent role in corporate communications with both
inside and outside the firm.
Business Value of Extranet
• With advanced audio and video technologies wired for internet capabilities
extranet can facilitate secure real-time conferencing, seminars and other
discussions.
• Extranets are often employed for collaboration with other companies for supply
chain management, product design and development and training efforts.
• Security is a primary concern with extranet since its purpose is to invite some but
exclude others.
• Access can be secured by a variety of techniques, including traditional
identification and passwords or by other methods such as digital certificates or IP
address recognition.
• A company may choose to provide open access to all partners for product testing
information but to only certain partners for confidential sales information.
Software Agents
• Software agents are intelligent autonomous software.
• They are intelligent because they can learn from the experience, draw
conclusion, take required actions and search relevant information
according to the given goals.
• They are autonomous because they are self-controlled and no need
to initiate, control and stop by others.
• Software agents are considered as a software as an assistant not a
software as a tool.
• They are developed using special scripting languages.
Software Agents
• Software agents can be defined as
• Something that acts on behalf of another
• Is sociable, capable of meaningful interaction with other agents (and humans)
• Can make decisions on other’s behalf autonomously
• Is capable of adapting to changing environments, learning from user
interaction, co-operation, and mobility
• Software agents are defined as being a software program that can
perform specific tasks for a user and possessing a degree of
intelligence that permits it to performs parts of its tasks
autonomously and to interact with its environment in a useful
manner.
Static and Dynamic Agents
• Static agents (Computer-bound): A software agent that exists and works
on a single stand alone computer or in a single server is known as static
agent. Static agents can not move outside a computer, so they are bounded
to work within a single computer. For example, an agent used to overview
stock position in a departmental store and to prepare purchase order.
• Dynamic (Mobile) Agents: A software agent that can travel throughout the
network from one server to another server is known as dynamic agent.
Mobile agents are autonomous and co-operate with other agents
whenever necessary. So mobile agents are computational software
processes capable of travelling over the internet, interacting with various
servers, gathering information and coming back home after performing the
assigned jobs. For example, a software agent use to search information
about different services provided by different airlines, including ticket
status, fee charges and other facilities.
Why need software agents?
• Managing the Information Overload: For the management of huge amount of
information and to find specific information, users need to spend more effort and
tome. Software agents are helpful to sort and filter incoming data stream
automatically into manageable amount of high value information.
• Decision Support: Knowledge workers such as managers, technical professional,
marketing personnel etc. may need a support for various tasks specially in
decision making areas. Timely and knowledgeable decisions made by these
professionals greatly impact their effectiveness and the success of the business in
the market place. Software agents are extremely helpful in making such
decisions.
• Repetitive office Activities: There is a pressure to automate tasks performed by
administrative and clerical persons and in various business areas to reduce the
operational cost and to increase office productivity. Software agents are highly
efficient to perform such office activities automatically.
Why need software agents?
• Mundane Personal Activities: In a fast paced society, a person should find
out new ways to minimize the time spent on routine personal tasks so that
they can devote more time to other activities. For this they can make use
of software agents to minimize the work burden.
• Search and Retrieval: Software agents are extremely helpful in searching
and retrieving required information from the huge databases. These agents
perform the tedious, time consuming and repetitive tasks of searching
databases, retrieving and filtering information and delivering it back to the
users.
• Domain Experts: An expert software agents generally behaves like an
expert consultant in a specific area such as in translation, legal service
stock broker, ticket finder etc.
Types/Taxonomy of Software Agents
Collaborative Agents
• Communication, autonomy, reasoning
• Emphasize autonomy, as well as communication and cooperation with
other agents
• Typically operate in open multi-agent environments
• Negotiate with their peers to reach mutually acceptable agreements
during cooperative problem solving
• They normally have very limited learning capabilities
• Collaborative agents are usually deliberative agents (e.g. based on the
BDI model), with some reasoning capabilities
• BDI => Belief–desire–intention model
Applications of Collaborative Agents
• Provide solutions to physically distributed problems
• air-traffic control, management of a team of robots
• Provide solutions to problems with distributed data sources
• different offices of a multi-national business
• Provide solutions that need distributed expertise
• health care provision (family doctors, nurses, specialists, laboratory analysis,
…)
Interface Agents
• Emphasize autonomy and learning in order to perform tasks for their
owners
• Support and provide proactive assistance to a human that is using a
particular application or solving a certain problem
• Anticipate user needs
• Make suggestions
• Provide advice without explicit user requests and so on.
• Limited cooperation with other agents
• Limited reasoning and planning capabilities.
• Kind of “secretary” that helps the user in their work environment.
• Interface agent / personal assistant / personal digital assistant / personal
agent
Applications of Interface Agents
• Mail management
• Scheduling meetings
• News filtering agent
• Buying/selling on user’s behalf
• Internet browsing
• Eg. Digital assistants like Siri, Cortana etc
Smart Agents
• Agent that posses all three attributes; learning, cooperative, and
autonomous, i.e. can learn and cooperate in autonomous manner
• Comprise the attributes of collaborative learning agents, interface
agent as well as collaboration agent.
• Can be used in diverse fields including real estate, complex problem
solving, research and also as smart marketing tool.
Learning Agents
• Improve performance by time
• The learning element is responsible for improvements which can
make a change to any of the knowledge components in the agent
itself.
• Solve many problems in AI
• Applications
• Self Driving Car
• Search Algorithms used in Search Engines
• Recognition of Gestures
• Computer Vision
Information Agents
• Software agents that manage the access to multiple, heterogeneous
and geographically distributed information sources.
• Information agents are most useful on the WWW where they can
help us with mundane tasks.
• For example, we carry out actions that may consume long time (e.g. searching
the Web for information).
Mobile Agents
• Able to migrate from host to host to work in a heterogeneous
network environment.
• Note that not only an agent transports itself, but also its state.
• When it reaches the new host, the agent should be able to perform
appropriately in the new environment.
Reactive Agents
• Reactive to their environment and external stimuli.
• Reactive agents can hardly communicate and collaborate (only
through actions that modify the common environment)
• Till now, there is a relatively few number of reactive software agent-
based applications.
Hybrid Agents
• Combination of two or more agent philosophies within a singular
agent.
• These philosophies may be mobile, interface, information,
collaborative, … etc.
• The goal is to acquire benefits from combination of agent
philosophies within a single agent is greater than the gains obtained
from the same agent based on a singular philosophy.
• An example of this is collaborative interface agents
Heterogeneous Agents
• Refers to an integrated set-up of at least two or more agents which
belong to two or more different agent classes.
• A heterogeneous agent system may also contain one or more hybrid
agents.
• A key requirement is in agent based software engineering where
heterogeneous agents play role in autonomous software
maintenance, upgrade or rewrites.
Properties/Requirements of Mobile Agents
• Programmability: Agent must be programmed or instructed in some
manner. Programming should be easy and user-friendly as much as
possible. Agents should be easily manipulated and created even by persons
who are not familiar with programming languages.
• Safety: Remote host must ensure that the agent will not commit illegal acts
of any kind. Mobile agents are viruses-like programs and without maximum
precaution they can do much harm to the hosting system.
• Privacy: The agent’s internal state and program should not be visible to
others. Mobile agents roam through Internet and bring important data (like
credit card numbers and so) which could be misused by malicious hosts or
by competing companies.
• Resource Usage: Software agent should not consume the resources
of the host computer inappropriately.
• Navigation-ability: The agent must be able to find the needed
resource, on the present host or by traveling from host to host,
fulfilling its goals. That is a part of its autonomy.
• Communication-ability: The agent must be able to communicate not
only with the master agent at the host but with other agents, too.
Through this communication, an agent can collaborate with other
agents in the intention to reach its goals
General Characteristics of Software Agents
1. Independent Agency
2. Agent Learning
3. Agent Co-operation
4. Agent Reasoning Capability
1. Rule-based approach
2. Knowledge-based approach
3. Learning approach
5. Agent Interface
1. Independent Agency
• Agency independence is the ability to handle user- defined tasks
autonomous of the user and often without the user’s guidance or
presence. The users do not directly involve in executing the task.
Once a user specifies how and when a task should be performed, the
software agent is delegated to perform it when the right conditions
are met. Note that the agent can execute the task immediately while
the user waits for a response (”tell me the best route to get to my
hotel from the airport”)
• Independent agents are usually created via scripting languages (for
example, Applescript, Telescript, or Safe-Tcl).
2. Agent Learning
• This is the ability to mimic the user’s steps when normally performing a
task. For example, learning agents would learn the user’s habits and
preferences over time and either respond to requests or act on the users’
behalf based on their experience.
• The learning usually occurs through observation, user feedback or training.
• One of the techniques used when learning by observing is to track the
user’s actions and memorize the situations that prompted those actions
(these are called ”situation-action pairs”). When a new situation occurs,
the system computes the similarity between the new situation and
previous situation-action pairs, to decide the course of action.
• Self learning capability is important to demonstrate the human like
intelligent behavior of software agent.
3. Agent Co-operation
• Cooperative behavior is the ability to engage in complex patterns of
two way communications with users and other agents. Agents are
usually developed to provide expertise in a specific area and can,
through cooperative work, jointly accomplish larger and more
complex tasks.
• So multiple agents should work in the co-operation of each other to
solve the complex problem.
4. Agent Reasoning Capability
• This is the ability to operate in a decision-making capacity in complex,
changing conditions.
• Agent should have self reasoning capability, that means they must be
able to draw conclusions from the existing knowledge. They must
explain the process of drawing conclusion. There are different
approaches for reason and some of them are;
i. Rule-based approach:
ii. Knowledge-based approach
iii. Learning approach
i. Rule-based approach: It uses user-scripted controls for information
handling. Users must recognize where an agent would be useful, program
the agent with rules or their profile of preferences, and update the rules or
profiles as preferences change.
ii. Knowledge-based approach: where an expert compiles a large amount of
information, which is then passed to an agent and used to deduce proper
behavior. This method requires a substantial amount of work from the
expert, and is not applicable to all types of tasks
iii. Learning approach: where agents can learn as they are used, acquire
statistical history and new knowledge that will guide their future behavior.
5. Agent Interface
• The notion of a software agent that can effectively help humans
perform daily tasks is even more powerful when users think of the
agents as some sort of humanoids, i.e. a software agent should have a
human-like interface - anthropomorphic interface.
• Natural language and voice interfaces are examples of agent
interfaces, as is a pictorial representation of the agent as a human
face.
• Some systems go as far as having the face express feelings.
Expressions of confusion, satisfaction, and surprise can be used by a
learning agent to denote its reaction to actions taken by the user.
Broadband Communication
• Concept of Broadband Communication
• Few Common Broadband Communication Channels
• ADSL,
• Wi-Fi,
• Wide Area Wireless,
• UMTS (3G),
• LTE (4G),
• Bluetooth
• Note: Write about every broadband communication channel
covering basic concepts, applications, advantages and
disadvantages by taking the help of class presentations.