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FREE online courses on ECOMMERCE FUNDAMENTALS - Mechanics of E commerce -
Network configuration |
This comprises of technological and administrative structures
of electronic communications.
The Internet has become an
especially significant factor in this configuration. There is now a
public Internet sphere, accessible by anyone with an Internet connection to the
public telecommunication network and a private Internet sphere consisting of
networks supported by the Internet Protocol (IP), but operating wholly or partly
within a closed corporate or inter-corporate communications structure.
Private networks are referred to
variously as ‘enterprise internets' or ‘intranets' (sometimes ‘extranets' where
inter corporate networking is involved) and they operate behind security
firewalls. The amount of traffic in private Internets now exceeds public
Internet traffic.
The Internet is plagued by technical problems like bandwidth
availability and network reliability. There have been bottlenecks in ensuring
the security of commercial transactions on the Internet and in coping with
real-time information exchange requirements of the electronic marketplace.
Major telecommunication providers can do much to improve this
situation, as illustrated by the US case where the infrastructure has benefited
recently from substantial investment in Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
technology.
