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The Internet Demystified - The Web Untangled© Copyright 1995 - 2002, Ernst, Szeto and Pang (ESP Computing) Pty Ltd No part of this document may be reproduced without the written consent of the authors.
AbstractThis paper describes the evolution of the Internet, its history and its potential for commercial exploitation. Current limitations and capabilities are summarised. Projections for future growth and development are outlined, and the impact on its current and potential user communities is postulated.
IntroductionThe aim of this document is to provide the reader with an understanding of the facilities offered, and some of the human issues involved, in the Internet. Although the authors agree that the Internet is a potent force in communications, business and research, we argue that many of the infrastructures and tools are still immature. We note, with some concern, the immense media hype, and thus the political knee-jerk reaction, relating to the "information superhighway". We hope to illustrate that the status of the superhighway is yet to be realised but recognise the potency of some of the Internet's key technologies. Undeniably, business opportunities DO exist out there in "cyberspace". The Internet provides businesses with a global communication facility through which they may solve their problems related to physical presence; it spans 135 countries and has more than 20 million users. The growth of the Internet has been phenomenal. Abe Dane writes that, "the Internet's growth from four Department of Defence computers 25 years ago to millions today is compelling proof of how powerful information becomes when the barriers to sharing it disappear" (Dane, A., Understanding and Exploring the Internet, Popular Mechanics, April 1995; 66-71). In fact Time magazine states "Twenty million strong and adding a million new users a month, the Internet is suddenly the place to be." The fact that popular magazines such as Popular Mechanics and Time as cited, even Woman's Weekly, have published articles relating to the Internet give some impression of the amount of media hype associated with the network. We will give a brief history of the Internet, outline its major uses, look at some of the future developments and possibilities and explore some of the existing limitations. An understanding of the Internet is of particular importance in Australia; we are fifth, equal with Canada, on the Top 10 list of countries with the largest number of Internet systems. (On#Sun, Aug 1995, Vol 2, Issue 1; 2) Presently the Internet offers a wide variety of services. These include electronic exchange of information (for example electronic mail, files, etc.), images, audio and video conferencing. Database searches across the Internet are also feasible.
History of the InternetThe Structure of the InternetThe Internet can be thought about in relation to its common protocols, as a physical collection of routers and circuits, as a set of shared resources, or even as an attitude to interconnection and intercommunication. Some common definitions given in the past include:
Today's Internet is a global resource connecting millions of users. It started life as an experiment over 20 years ago by the U.S. Department of Defence. While the networks that make up the Internet are based on a standard set of protocols (a mutually agreed upon method of communication between parties), the Internet also has gateways to networks and services that are based on other protocols. An IP (Internet protocol) number or IP address is a unique address assigned to each computer on the Internet. This number is used by the IP protocol to allow hosts and computers to communicate with each other. A computer, configured to use TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), must have an IP address. Most Internet services and tools only require the computer to be configured with TCP/IP and a valid IP address. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is the common name for a family of over 100 data-communications protocols used to organise computers and data-communications equipment into computer networks. TCP/IP was developed to interconnect hosts on ARPANet (Advanced Research Projects Agency), PRNet (packet radio), and SATNet (packet satellite). All three of these networks have since been retired; but TCP/IP lives on... The Domain Name System (DNS) enables TCP/IP users to access network services by specifying the name of the computer he/she wishes to connect to instead of its numeric address. DNS is not a tool for naming or finding users. It is simply maps the name of a computer to an IP address.
A Brief History of the InternetThe exact date in which the Internet "came to life" varies from author to author but it was the U.S. Department of Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency which set the wheels in motion. This packet-switch network was ideal for the Department of Defence because it was flexible and resilient and, quite simply, could survive should one or more parts be destroyed by military aggression. Back in the mid-1960s, at the height of the cold war, the Department of Defence were faced with a tough question: How could orders be issued to the armed forces if the U.S. were ravaged by a nuclear assault? The communication hubs in place at the time -- the telephone switching offices and the radio and TV broadcast stations -- were not only vulnerable to attack, they would also probably be the first to go. The Pentagon needed a military command-and-control system that would continue to operate even if most of the phone lines were in tatters and the switches had melted down. In 1964 a researcher at the Rand Corp. named Paul Baran came up with a bizarre solution to this Strangelovian puzzle. He designed a computer-communications network that had no hub, no central switching station, no governing authority, and that assumed that the links connecting any city to any other were totally unreliable. Baran's system was the antithesis of the orderly, efficient phone network; it was more like an electronic post office designed by a madman. In Baran's scheme, each message was cut into tiny strips and stuffed into electronic envelopes, called packets, each marked with the address of the sender and the intended receiver. The packets were then released like so much confetti into the web of interconnected computers, where they were tossed back and forth over high-speed wires in the general direction of their destination and reassembled when they finally got there. If any packets were missing or mangled (and it was assumed that some would be), it was no big deal; the were simply re-sent. In 1982 Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was developed and remains in use today as the network protocol. At this stage it would be fair to say that the academic community formed the majority of Internet users. The major uses were E-mail, FTP, Gopher and Telnet (outlined in the next section). In 1986 there were approximately 5000 host computers on the Internet. Current figures are difficult to ascertain exactly but at the high end of the scale there have been predictions (such as those by the U.S. consultancy firm Network Wizards) that suggest, at present growth rates, everyone on the planet will be connected by 2003 (in Arthur, C., And the Net Total Is..., New Scientist, 13 May 1995; 29-31). The following graph gives an idea of the rate of growth of the Internet. Note that the numbers quoted refer to domain machines only and these can have any number of individual machines connected to them. Furthermore, last year the three largest commercial network services, America Online, Prodigy and CompuServe did not offer their millions of clients direct Internet connection but now do. This increase in Internet access is difficult to measure because they use a "floating address" system (Arthur, C., And the Net Total Is..., New Scientist, 13 May 1995; 29-31)
Modified from Arthur, C., And the Net Total Is..., New Scientist, 13 May 1995; 29-31 It is undeniable that the huge increase in Internet use is partly due to the development of the World Wide Web, which will be discussed later in this paper. The amount of data moving through the Internet is immense. In May 1994, it was estimated that 800 000 Megabytes of information travelled over the Internet (the equivalent of 2300 Encyclopaedia Britannicas) (Kleiner, K., What a Tangled Web They Wove, New Scientist, 30 July 1994; 35-39) More than 1.4 billion Megabytes of information were transferred over the Internet between March 1993 and March 1994. (On#Sun, Aug 1995, Vol 2, Issue1; 2). A measure of the Internet's commercial growth is the monthly gain in commercial domain registrations (such as ibm.com & apple.com). According to the market researchers Internet Info this stands at 10% per month. In September 1994 there were more than 20 000 unique commercial domains (IEEE Spectrum, Jan 1995; 34). The growth of commercial companies on the Internet has rocketed, currently estimated to double every three months (Arthur, C., And the Net Total Is..., New Scientist, 13 May 1995; 29-31)
ServicesElectronic Mail (E-Mail)E-mail can still be thought of as the basic tool of Internet. Any electronic mail system which is connected to the Internet and supports Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) can send messages to other Internet mail users. The general format for an address is "username@somewhere.domain". The advantage of E-mail is that it almost instantaneously reaches its destination, and if it does not reach the recipient it "bounces" back - an often instantaneous 'return-to-sender' as it where. TelnetTelnet is a program that allows the user to login to another computer and remotely execute software there. Typically telnet allows you login either to access a "shell" command environment or some other utility, like a weather server or game. To 'telnet' to a remote computer, you need to know its name. This can either be symbolic, like "steer.sdsu.edu" or as a numeric address, like "130.191.1.11". File Transfer Protocol (FTP)FTP allows copying of files from remote computers to your local hosts. Thousands of sites provide anonymous FTP service, allowing the downloading of everything from online books, to satellite pictures of the weather, to public-domain utilities and games. Anonymous FTP is a convention for setting up anonymous users with restricted file transfer capability. Typically, the name "anonymous" is used as the ID and an Internet mailing address is used as the password. Many hosts on the Internet support anonymous FTP in order to distribute software and various kinds of information. Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS)WAIS is a distributed information retrieval system. It helps users search databases over networks using an intuitive interface. The databases (called sources) are mostly collections of text-based documents, but may also contain sound, pictures and video . World Wide Web (WWW)The World Wide Web project is a distributed hypermedia system. The advantage of hypermedia is that, within hypermedia documents, more information about cited subjects can often be accesssed by simply clicking on the appropriate area of the document. In fact documents can be, and often are, linked to other sources of related subject matter. The browsers can also access files by FTP, NNTP (the Internet news protocol), gopher. As Web technology evolves, there will be an increasing use of audio and video, 3D animation and access to external databases. Technology for supporting realtime data is being introduced by Netscape Communications Corp, 3D visualisation is being pursued by Sun Microsystems (HotJava) and Silicon Graphics (VRML), formatting capabilities are being enhanced by Adobe Systems, and broadcast audio by Progressive Networks. The Web's growth can be attributed to a number of factors, including:
Over the last few months, more than half of the Fortune 500 companies have launched marketing programs on the World Wide Web. In a Business Week article, Bill Washburn stated "The Net's information-rich Web helps companies reach new customers." Business Week stated, "Today, the Internet is becoming a hot-bed of advertising and commercial activity...". The most effective promotional tool has been the Web via its ability to carry the messages of marketing and communication professionals to targeted groups. Promotional material (for example new product announcements, product catalogues, and training/seminar schedules) can be made available via the web (The Industry.Net Marketing & Research Group, 1995)
New TechnologiesVideo ConferencingAs promised by the cartoon character Dick Tracy, video conferencing is now becoming a reality. Until recently the major handicap was quite simply speed (bandwidth). Emerging technologies promise to deliver throughput that will solve the problem. IEEE Spectrum (JAN 1994; 26) pointed out "the most important speed related news was the exponential leap of interest in, and commitment to, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)". ATM coupled with MBone (the Internet multicast backbone used in video conferencing and the like), provides the infrastructure for quality video conferencing over the Internet. Video conferencing is an important emerging technology as demonstrated by MBone's growth which has continued to double in size every few months (IEEE Spectrum, JAN 1994; 26) "Fully implemented, the MBone could provide modestly priced videoconferencing capabilities to any individual or business with Internet access." (BYTE July 1995; 74) 3D ApplicationsWith the availability of increasingly more powerful computers, Virtual Realty and 3D display systems are becoming more common. Sun Microsystems are developing HotJava, a technology intended to be easily adaptable to support real time market feeds, 3-D video and integrated applications. VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) is the standard for providing 3-D graphic interaction on the Web, and is supported by Silicon Graphics, Netscape Communications, Digital Equipment, Template Graphics and NEC. An example of future implementation of these technologies is the engineer designed virtual factory, no physical models need by made, textures and colour schemes can be changed on the fly, different seasonal lighting can be illustrated, and demonstrated to remote clients, the possibilities go on... SecurityInadequate security is the biggest challenge to making the Internet a commercial market place. Byte (June 1995; 72) predicted that "Credit-card companies will begin using [Internet] network payments in a big way ... These companies will eventually offer corporate billing and debit transactions, as well a customer credit billing.". Two emerging standards addressing this security problem are SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) from Netscape Communication and SHTTP (Secure Hypertext Transport Protocol). from Enterprise Integration Technologies. Future BrowsersThe next generation of the browsers will very likely include facilities such as voice recognition, payment processing, full-motion video, and intelligent agents. (IEEE Spectrum, JAN 1995; 34)
Social IssuesThe Quality of InformationThere is great debate in the professional and academic communities as to the quality of the information available on the Internet. Many disciplines use the Internet as a clearing house or forum for research. Physicists, for example, have been using Internet as a pre-print forum for peer review for some time (Mulligan, M., Media Features: Speeding up the Appliance of Science, Financial Times, March 13,1995; 13) The debate has been more contentious with some disciplines such as Medicine where the quality of information is open for greater scrutiny. La Porte argues that BioMedical Journals in their present form will be dead in the near future (La Porte, R., E., The Death of Biomedical Journals. British Medical Journal. 1995,310; 1387-90) whereas the New England Journal of Medicine editorial board are concerned about the lack of quality peer review (The Internet and the Journal, NEJM. June 22, 1995) Censorship and CopyrightIt is extremely difficult to censor content of the Internet given its anarchic structure. Britain's minister of technology (Ian Taylor) admits that it is extremely difficult for governments to restrict access to information which, in printed form, would be deemed to be obscene (under UK obscenity laws) or in breach of copyright. (Arthur, C., Internet Anarchy in the UK, New Scientist, 25 February 1995 4). Sociological IssuesThe Internet directly effects the ways in which we communicate. Bioanthropologist Andrew Petto has been studying the interactions within three large electronic discussion groups. He suggests that it is difficult to predict whether these groups lead to greater fragmentation of society or greater democracy (Davidson, K., Liberté, Egalité, Interneté, New Scientist, 27 May 1995; 38-43) Computer-mediated communications seem to follow patterns characterised as impersonal, deindividualating and ruder (Franco, V., Piirto, R., et al, Anatomy of a Flame: Conflict and Community Building on the Internet, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Summer 1995; 12-17). These two articles cover areas of gender issue, socio-economic class and race in Internet communication and are worth while reading for those interested in these issues. Business Opportunities and User ProfileAccording to the US Statistical Abstract, 97.8 percent of all non residential businesses are classified as small business (100 or fewer employees). Of those, says the research firm IDC, about 67 percent own PCs (BYTE Jan 1995; 122). All of these companies have the potential to be connected to the Internet. The Internet offers the opportunity to enhance many aspects of such companies' market development and support activities. Such enhancements do not incur the high costs typically associated with local-dependant sales and support staffs. Internet allows after sales support to become more efficient. Vendors can distribute product documentation on the Web and provide support by E-mail. To aid in initiating sales transactions, prospective customers can often send E-mail to info@the target vendor. Product information can often be extensive, including for instance full catalogues, service examples, endorsements and technical specifications. Additionally catalogues and order forms can be distributed on-line. Direct marketers on the Internet enable customers to submit orders by simply clicking a button and completing a form. Passwords authorise customers to access accounts, and secure transactions allow customers to submit credit card numbers or even pay with "digital cash" (BYTE Jan 1995; 125). In the same issue it went on to state that nearly 75% of new Internet growth was derived from users within the business community. More importantly, of the networks registered through the Internet worldwide, approximately 63% of these were owned by businesses or research laboratories. The number of commercial domains (business Internet connections) increased by more than 261% between April 1993 and April 1994. (BYTE July 1995; 82) The University of Michigan Business School recently found that four to five times more people use the WWW (World Wide Web) to find information about the products and services than those who actually buy something through the Net. (BYTE July 1995; 69). As a result many businesses establish a WWW presence for image-building reasons rather than direct financial reward. ActivMedia, a market researcher that specialises in Internet, conducted a recent survey of Internet marketers. Of the respondents 72% said that the purpose of the on-line presence was to enhance their company's image, and 74% use the Internet to distribute pricing and product information. (BYTE July 1995; 82). Some business people, such as Bill Rollinson of the Internet Shopping Network, boast about getting "300 000 hits per day" (one hit is equivalent to an individual accessing the information). A recent survey in USA Today (Aug 28 1995; 10) suggested the proportion of buyers is going to increase as technology makes buying easier for the customer, and security makes it 'appear' more safe. USA Today proclaimed 'We are at the beginning of what will someday be the largest 'medium' for transactions in the world.' In the U.S., 46% of 490 publicly traded companies with sales over $USD 1.5 billion and 38% of 2064 publicly traded companies with sales over $USD 400 million have an Internet presence. (On#Sun, Aug 1995, Vol 2, Issue1; 2) The demographic of the WWW user is probably the highest mass-market demographic available. Of the more than 20 million Internet subscribers, approximately 50% are 25 yrs of age or younger (The Industry.Net Marketing & Research Group 1995). Such individuals are typically university educated or being university educated; ie are commanding high salaries or will soon command high salaries. It is no surprise that Wired magazine, the magazine of choice of the Internet community, has no problem attracting advertising from Lexus and other high-end marketers . The first study of Internet marketers, based on a representative sample, was released by ActivMedia Inc. Projected sales, for the period from Sept 1994 to Aug 1995, are around $USD 118 million. Callahan (of Forrester Research) predicts the industry for Internet related hardware and services will be around $USD 10 billion by the year 2000. Such growth can only be justified by ensuring a direct correlation to projected sales (assuming a substantial portion of this growth to be attributable to advertising).
ConclusionThe Internet is an immensely powerful tool. Its current growth rate is likely to continue as is the range of services offered. We believe that the Internet will soon establish itself as an invaluable, and in some cases the primary, marketing tool for a wide variety of businesses. In the very near future some of the likely uses of the Internet will include:
References[1] Arthur, C., And the Net Total Is... New Scientist, 13 May 1995; 29-31 [2] Arthur, C., Internet Anarchy in the UK, New Scientist, 25 February 1995; 4 [3] BYTE Jan 1995; 122-5 [4] BYTE June 1995; 72 [5] BYTE July 1995; 69-82 [6] Dane, A., Understanding and Exploring the Internet, Popular Mechanics, April 1995; 66-71 [7] Davidson, K., Liberté, Egalité, Interneté, New Scientist, 27 May 1995 ;38- 43 [8] Franco, V., Piirto, R., et al, Anatomy of a Flame: Conflict and Community Building on the Internet, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, Summer 1995 ;12-17 [9] IEEE Spectrum Jan 1995; 26-34 [10] Kleiner, K., What a Tangled Web They Wove, New Scientist, 30 July 1994; 35-39 [11] La Porte, R., E., The Death of Biomedical Journals, British Medical Journal, 1995,310; 1387-90 [12] Mulligan, M., Media Features: Speeding up the Appliance of Science, Financial Times, March 13,1995; 13 [13] On#Sun Aug 1995 Vol 2 Issue 1; 2 [14] The Industry.Net Marketing & Research Group 1995 [16] The Internet and the Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, June 22,1995 [17] USA Today, Aug 28 1995; 10
© Copyright 1995 - 2002, Ernst, Szeto and Pang (ESP Computing) Pty Ltd No part of this document may be reproduced without the written consent of the authors.
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