Chapter 7

The Internet, Intranets, and

Extranets
ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 The Internet
 The internet
 A network of networks
 The internet transmits data from one computer
(called a host) to another
 Internet networks
 Linked networks that work much the same
way -- they pass data around in packets, each
of which carries the addresses of its sender and
receiver Schematic

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 Internet ‘Discussion’ (1)
A global network connecting millions of computers. As of 1999, the
Internet has more than 200 million users worldwide, and that number
is growing rapidly. More than 100 countries are linked into
exchanges of data, news and opinions.

Unlike online services, which are centrally controlled, the Internet is

decentralized by design. Each Internet computer, called a host, is
independent. Its operators can choose which Internet services to
use and which local services to make available to the global Internet
community. Remarkably, this anarchy by design works exceedingly
ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 Internet ‘Discussion’ (2)
well.

There are a variety of ways to access the Internet. Most online

services, such as America Online, offer access to some Internet
services. It is also possible to gain access through a commercial
Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Note: York University’s CCS (Computer and Communications

Services) is an ISP.
ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 How the Internet Works
 Transport control protocol (TCP)
 A protocol that operates at the transport layer and is
used in combination with IP by most Internet
applications
 Backbone
 An Internet high-speed, long distance communications
links (like a bus; wire that connects nodes)
 Uniform resource locator (URL)
 An assigned address on the Internet for each computer
 E.g., http://www.yorku.ca/

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 Domain Affiliations
Domain Affiliations
arts cultural and entertainment activities
com business organizations
edu educational sites
firm businesses and firms
gov government sites
info information service providers
mil military sites
nom individuals
net networking organizations
org organizations
rec recreational activities
store businesses offering goods for purchase
web entities related to World Wide Web activities
net networking organizations
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 Access to the Internet
 LAN servers
• Local servers can provide access to the Internet through
normal connections (e.g., Ethernet)
 Serial line internet protocol (SLIP) and
Point-to-point protocol (PPP)
• Communications protocol software that transmits packets over
telephone lines, allowing dial-up access to the Internet
 Connection via an on-line service
• Examples are America Online and Microsoft Network. These
services usually require sign-up procedures

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 Three Ways to Access the
Internet

Schematic

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 Internet Service Providers
 Internet service provider (ISP)
 Any company that provides individuals or
companies with access to the Internet
 Thousands of providers including large
communications companies
 Need an account with the ISP and software that
links with TCP/IP

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 ISP Examples
Internet Service Provider Web Address
AT&T WorldNet Service www.att.com
Digex, Inc. www.digex.net
GTE Internetworking www.gte.net
IBM Internet Connection www.ibm.net
MCI Internet www.mci2000.com
NetCom On-Line Communication www.netcom.com
Services
PSINet, Inc. www.psinet.com
Sprint Internet Services www.sprint.net
Uunet Technologies, Inc. www.us.uu.net

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 Internet Services
 E-mail
 Telnet
 FTP
 Usenet and newsgroups
 Chat rooms
 Internet phone
 Internet videoconferencing
 Content streaming
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 Selected Usenet Groups
alt.fan.addams.family alt.life.itself
alt.pets alt.fan.bevis-n-butthead
alt.autos.camaro alt.fan.leonardo-dicaprio
alt.cloning alt.history
alt.fan.u2 alt.music.blues
alt.sports.baseball.cinci-red alt.music.zz-top
alt.politics.socialism alt.sports.college.sec
alt.sports.soccer.european.uk

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 Internet Services
 Internet telephony
 Also called voice-over-IP (VOIP)
• Technology that enables network managers to route
phone calls and fax transmissions over the same
network they use for data

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ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 VOIP ‘Discussion’
Internet telephony is a category of hardware and software that
enables people to use the Internet as the transmission medium for
telephone calls. For users who have free, or fixed-price, Internet
access, Internet telephony software essentially provides free
telephone calls anywhere in the world. To date, however, Internet
telephony does not offer the same quality of telephone service as
direct telephone connections.
There are many Internet telephony applications available. Some,
like CoolTalk and NetMeeting, come bundled with popular Web
browsers. Others are stand-alone products. Internet telephony
products are sometimes called IP telephony, Voice over the Internet
(VOI) or Voice over IP (VOIP) products.
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 Content Streaming
 Content streaming
• A method for transferring multimedia files over the
Internet so that the data stream of voice and pictures
plays continuously, without a break, or very few of
them
• It also enables users to browse large files in real
time

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 The World Wide Web
 World Wide Web
• A collection of tens of thousands of independently-
owned computers that work together as one in an
Internet service

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 WWW Terminology
 Home page
• The cover page for a Web site that has graphics,
titles, coloured text, etc.
 Hypermedia
• Tools that connect the data on Web pages, allowing
users to access topics in whatever order they wish
 Hypertext markup language (HTML)
• The standard page description language for Web
pages

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 Some Interesting Web Sites

Library of Congress http://lcweb.loc.gov

PointCast http://www.pointcast.com
In-Box Direct http://www.netscape.com
Online Career Center http://occ.com
New York Times http://www.nytimes.com
Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org
Sportsline USA http://www.sportsline.com
White House http://www.whitehouse.gov
MIT Lab for Computer Science http://www.lcs.mit.edu
The Wall Street Journal http://www.wsj.com

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 WWW Terminology
 Web browser
• Software that creates a unique hypermedia-based
menu on your computer screen and provides a
graphical interface to the Web
 Web page
• A screen of information sent to a requesting user
and presented through a browser
 Applet
• A small program embedded in Web pages

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 HTML
 “The” language of WWW pages
 Need we say more!!!

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 Search Engines
 Search engines
 A search tool for the Web (like card catalogs in
libraries)
 E.g., Altavista http://www.altavista.digital.com
Excite http://www.excite.com
Galaxy http://www.einet.net
Hotbot http://www.hotbot.com
Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com
Lycos http://www.lycos.com
Webcrawler http://www.webcrawler.com
Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com
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 Java
 Java
 An object-oriented programming language
 Developed by Sun Microsystems
 Based on C++
 Allows small programs -- applets -- to be
embedded within an HTML document

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 Applets
 Applets are small java programs that are
downloaded from the server to the local
machine

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 Push Technology
 Push technology
• Technology that enables users to automatically
receive information over the Internet rather than
searching for it using a browser
•Also called Webcasting
 E.g.,
• PointCast
• InterMind

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations

 Webcasting ‘Discussion’
Using the Internet, and the World Wide Web in particular, to
broadcast information. Unlike typical surfing, which relies on a pull
method of transferring Web pages, webcasting uses push
technologies.

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations

 Push ‘Discussion’ (1)
In client/server applications, to send data to a client without
the client requesting it. The World Wide Web is based on a pull
technology where the client browser must request a Web page
before it is sent. Broadcast media, on the other hand, are push
technologies because they send information out regardless of
whether anyone is tuned in.

Increasingly, companies are using the Internet to deliver information

push-style. One of the most successful examples of this is
PointCast, which delivers customized news to users' desktops.
ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 Push ‘Discussion’ (2)
Probably the oldest and most widely used push technology is e-mail.
This is a push technology because you receive mail whether you ask
for it or not -- that is, the sender pushes the message to the
receiver.

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 Business Use of the Web
 Uses:
 Applications, E-mail, Product Display, Catalogs, Order
placement
 Products people are likely to buy on the Web
Software 77%
Books 67%
CDs 64%
Computer hardware 63%
Airline tickets 61%
Magazine subscriptions 53%
Concert/theater tickets 48%
Flowers 45%
ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 Intranets and Extranets
 Intranet
• An internal corporate network built using Internet
and World Wide Web standards and products that
allows employees of an organization to gain access
to corporate information
 Extranet
• A network based on Web technologies that links
selected resources of the intranet of a company with
its customers, suppliers, or other business partners

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations

 Intranet ‘Discussion’
A network based on TCP/IP protocols (an internet) belonging to an
organization, usually a corporation, accessible only by the
organization's members, employees, or others with authorization. An
intranet's Web sites look and act just like any other Web sites, but
the firewall surrounding an intranet fends off unauthorized access.

Like the Internet itself, intranets are used to share information.

Secure intranets are now the fastest-growing segment of the
Internet because they are much less expensive to build and manage
than private networks based on proprietary protocols.
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 Extranet ‘Discussion’
A new buzzword that refers to an intranet that is partially
accessible to authorized outsiders. Whereas an intranet resides
behind a firewall and is accessible only to people who are members
of the same company or organization, an extranet provides various
levels of accessibility to outsiders. You can access an extranet only
if you have a valid username and password, and your identity
determines which parts of the extranet you can view.

Extranets are becoming a very popular means for business partners

to exchange information.
ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 Virtual Private Network (VPN)
 Virtual Private Network (VPN)
• A secure connection between two points across the
Internet
 Tunneling
• The process by which VPNs transfer information by
encapsulating traffic in IP packets and sending the
packets over the Internet

Schematic

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ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 VPN ‘Discussion’
Short for virtual private network, a network that is constructed by
using public wires to connect nodes. For example, there are a
number of systems that enable you to create networks using the
Internet as the medium for transporting data. These systems use
encryption and other security mechanisms to ensure that only
authorized users can access the network and that the data cannot
be intercepted.

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 Tunneling ‘Discussion’
A technology that enables one network to send its data via another
network's connections. Tunneling works by encapsulating a network
protocol within packets carried by the second network. For example,
Microsoft's PPTP technology enables organizations to use the
Internet to transmit data across a virtual private network (VPN). It
does this by embedding its own network protocol within the TCP/IP
packets carried by the Internet. (Note: PPTP = point-to-point tunneling
protocol)

Tunneling is also called encapsulation.

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations
 Internet Issues
 Management issues
 No centralized governing body for the Internet
 Service bottlenecks
 Phenomenal growth has left a service void
 Providers underestimating computing power
needed
 Reconciling router addresses needed to
transverse the network
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 Privacy & Security
 Cryptography
• The process of converting a message into a secret code and
changing the encoded message back to regular text
 Encryption
• The original conversion of a message into a secret code
 Digital Signature
• An encryption technique used for online financial transactions

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations

 Have a
nice day… Encryption
software
running on
sending
computer

E%$&:”}{|…

Decryption Have a
software nice day…

running on
Receiving
computer

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations

 Firewalls
 Firewalls
• A method of preventing unauthorized access
between a company’s computers and the Internet
(looks at the header of a packet)
 Assured pipeline
• An Internet security method that looks at the entire
request for data and then determines whether the
request is valid

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 Firewall ‘Discussion’ (1)
A system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a
private network. Firewalls can be implemented in both hardware and
software, or a combination of both. Firewalls are frequently used to
prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private
networks connected to the Internet, especially intranets. All
messages entering or leaving the intranet pass through the firewall,
which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet
the specified security criteria.

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations

 Firewall ‘Discussion’ (2)
There are several types of firewall techniques:
 Packet filter: Looks at each packet entering or leaving the network and
accepts or rejects it based on user-defined rules. Packet filtering is fairly
effective and transparent to users, but it is difficult to configure. In addition, it
is susceptible to IP spoofing.
 Application gateway: Applies security mechanisms to specific applications,
such as FTP and Telnet servers. This is very effective, but can impose a
performance degradation.
 Circuit-level gateway: Applies security mechanisms when a TCP or UDP
connection is established. Once the connection has been made, packets can
flow between the hosts without further checking.
 Proxy server: Intercepts all messages entering and leaving the network. The
proxy server effectively hides the true network addresses.

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 Firewall ‘Discussion’ (3)
In practice, many firewalls use two or more of these techniques in
concert.

A firewall is considered a first line of defense in protecting private

information. For greater security, data can be encrypted.

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 End of Chapter 7

Chapter 8

ITEC 1010 Information and Organizations