 Technology for Online Business: Electronic commerce brings new

forms of markets to the consumer and also to the industry and has
brought the byers and sellers together regardless of their physical
location.

 Network services, such as electronic mail, File Transfer Protocol(FTP),

World Wide Web (www) and Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
and Remote login (TELNET) are offering the full set of Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) / Internet Protocol (IP) protocols.

 IT Infrastructure: IT (information technology) is a term that

encompasses all forms of technology used to create, store, exchange
and use information in its various forms (business data, voice
conversations, still images, motion pictures, multimedia
presentations, and other forms).

 Information technology refers to the creation, gathering,

processing, storage, and delivery of information and the
processes & devices that make all this possible.
• Information Technology Infrastructure: An organization’s
information technology infrastructure is the base or foundation for
the delivery of information to support the organization’s programs
and management.

 The infrastructure contains elements upon which an

organization’s information technology activities are dependent
and hence an organization must define, implement and manage these
infrastructure elements to successfully employ information
technology.

 Characteristics of IT Infrastructure: The desirable characteristics

of IT infrastructure are:

1. Efficient support for the exchange of information within the

organization and with other organizations.

2. Reliable availability of information processing capabilities whenever

and wherever they are needed.
3. Preservation of the integrity and confidentiality of information
maintained by the organization.

4. Sufficient flexibility to allow the timely and efficient addition of new

information management capabilities and modifications or
established capabilities.

5. Consistency with a coherent set of technical and managerial

standards for the employment of information technology.

 Elements of IT Infrastructure: Typical elements of an IT

infrastructure include:

1. Application Systems: The applications that an organization adopts

or develops to achieve personal productivity and program support
benefits.

2. Architecture: The guidelines or blueprints that an organization

follows in designing, acquiring, and implementing information
technology solutions.
 Organizationally approved definitions, specifications, and standards
are the primary components in an organization’s information
technology architecture.

3. Communications: Local area and wide area network components,

including linkages with other organizations.

4. Equipment: An organization’s hardware platforms and components

ranging from individual personal computers to mainframes and
associated peripherals.

5. Facilities: The electrical, ventilation, fire suppression, physical

security, wiring, and other components required to support an
organization’s information technology capability including the
physical structure.

6. Funding: Current and projected funding for information technology

planning, acquisition, development, and operations activities.
7. Partnerships: Relationships with other public and private sector
organizations that support and enable the organization’s pursuit and
use of information technology.

8. People: An organization’s technical staff, user community groups,

and executive steering and oversight committees that are charged
with information technology planning, approval, development,
management, operations, and security responsibilities.

9. Plans: Detailed designs or methods for aligning information

technology activities with organization business strategies and
accomplishing business objectives. Typical organization information
technology plans include strategic, risk management, and
operational recovery.

10. Policies: The rules, conventions, and protocols adopted by the

organization to govern the pursuit and use of information
technology.
11. Processes and Procedures: The defined steps for planning,
approving, acquiring, developing, operating, maintaining,
enhancing, and using information technology within the
organization.

12. Service Definitions: The types of services provided, accepted

service levels, and service delivery time frames established for an
organization’s information technology support.

13. Software: The set of operating system, utility, communications, user

interface, and management programs that enable users to operate
and control computers and develop application systems.

14. Ownership, Contract and Agreement: The infrastructure includes

elements owned by the organization and available under contract or
through inter organization agreement. For agencies that employ the
services of a consolidated data center, the required data center
resources are considered part of the organization’s infrastructure.
15. Reengineering the Business Process: The search for and
implementation of radical changes in business processes that result
in dramatic efficiencies, reductions in turnaround time,
improvements in quality, or improvements in customer service.

 Internet: A network of networks, or “Internet: is a group of two or

more networks that are:
• Interconnected physically.
• Capable of communicating and sharing data with each other.
• Able to act together as a single network.

 The Internet is a gigantic collection of millions of computers, all

linked together on a computer network.

 The three main defining characteristics of the Internet are:

i. Interoperable: Interoperable means that the standards allow

communication across networks. This does not limit the access of
information to a proprietary site, location, machine or brand name.
ii. Packet Switched: Connections are not FIXED from point to point
for the duration or the transmission. A telephone call is circuit
switched – i.e. dedicated path is established to transmit the entire
conversation.

 When Packet Switched data is sent over the internet – it transmits a

small part of the data, verifies it is correct, then sends more
information toward the destination.

 Packet switched networks do not require all of the information to be

delivered through the same path and by not dedicating the path for
the duration of the connection, this method allows more connections
to be able to send information across the same space or allows for
sharing resources.

iii. Data Network: A network that carries data information (digital –

computer) instead of voice information (analog – telephone) is
known as Data network.
 There are many instances where these “definitions” of data and voice
are starting to overlap. For example, Computers connecting to
regular phone lines are technically carrying data over a voice line and
in some progressive parts of the country, digital phone lines are
starting to make appearances.

 Architecture of the Internet: The Web physically consists of one’s

personal computer, web browser software, a connection to an Internet
service provider computer, called Servers that host digital data, and
Routers and Switches to direct the flow of information.

 The Web is known as a Client-server system. The computer on which

one is working is called the client and the remote computers that store
electronic files are the servers.
 The network allows all of the computers to communicate with one
another. A home computer may be linked to the Internet using a
phone-line modem, DSL or cable modem that is connected to an
Internet Service Provider (ISP).

 A computer in a business or university will usually have a Network

Interface Card (NIC) that directly connects it to a Local Area
Network (LAN) inside the business. The business can then connect
its LAN to an ISP using a high-speed phone line.

 ISPs are connected to larger ISPs and the largest ISPs maintain fiber-
optic “backbones” for an entire nation or region. Backbones around
the world are connected through fiber-optic lines, undersea cables or
satellite links. And thus every computer on the Internet is connected
to every other computer on the Internet.

 The “glue” that holds the Web together is called Hypertext and
Hyperlinks. This feature allows electronic files on the Web to be
linked so that one can easily jump between them. Web pages are
written in a computer language called Hypertext Markup
Language or HTML.
Fig: Internet Service Provider (ISP)
 www: The World Wide Web, also referred to as the www and “the
Web”, is the universe of information available via Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP).

 The www and HTTP allow us to:-

• Create “links” from one piece of information to another;
• Incorporate references to sounds, graphics, and movies, etc.;
• “Understand” other Internet protocols, such as FTP, TELNET.

 The Web presents information as a series of “documents” often

referred to as web pages which are prepared using the Hypertext
Markup Language (HTML).

 Using HTML, the document’s author can specially code sections of

the document to “point” to other information resources. These
specially coded sections are referred to as Hypertext links.

 Users viewing the web page can select the hypertext link and retrieve
or connect to the information resource that the link points to.
 Hypertext “links” can lead to other documents, sounds, images,
databases, e-mail addresses, etc.

 As www can incorporate graphics and “understands” other Internet

protocols, it can provide an easy-to-use interface for resources
available via these protocols.

Fig: World Wide Web (www)

 The World Wide Web is non-linear: There is no top, no bottom
and one does not have to follow a hierarchical path to information
resources.
• One can jump from one link (resource) to another.

• One can go directly to a resource if one know the Uniform

Resource Locator (URL) address.
• One can even jump to specific parts of a document.

• As the Web is not hierarchical and can handle graphics, it offers

a great deal of flexibility in the way information resources can
be organized, presented, and described.

 Advantages of www: The advantages of the Web are its flexibility in

organizing and presenting information, its non-hierarchical easy-to-
navigate structure, its ability to handle and “understand” many
different file formats and Internet protocols, and its overall ease of
use.
 Domain Name: A domain name is a way to identify and locate
computers connected to the Internet as no two organizations can
have the same domain name.

 A domain name always contains two or more components separated

by periods, called “dots”. For example:- du.ac.in, sxcran.org, delhi.edu,
netsol.com, nasa.gov etc.

 Once a domain name has been established, “sub domains” can be

created within the domain. For example, the domain name for a large
company could be “yahoo.com” and within this domain, subdomains
can be created for each of the company’s regional offices.

 The structure for this is: hostname.subdomain.second-level

domain.top-level domain

 For example, a.india.yahoo.com describes a single host computer

named a, in the India office of the Yahoo Company. All domain names
may not have a hostname and subdomain. In addition, more than one
subdomain can also be assigned.
 The top-level portion of a domain name describes the type of
organization holding that name. the major categories for top-level
domains are:

• com – commercial entities

• edu – four year colleges and universities

• net – organizations directly involved in internet operations, such as

network providers and network information centers
• org – miscellaneous organizations that don’t fit any other category,
such as non-profit groups
• gov – government entities

• mil – united states military

• Country codes – a two letter abbreviation for a particular country. For

example, “in” for India, “uk” for United Kingdom etc.
 Each domain name corresponds to numeric IP (Internet Protocol)
addresses. An IP address takes the form of 4 numbers, each one
between 0 and 255, separated by periods.

 The Internet uses the numeric IP address to send data. For example,
one may be connecting to a www server with the domain name
“rs.internic.net”, but as far as the network is concerned, the
connection to the Web server is with the IP address associated with
that domain name.

 The Domain Name System (DNS) completes the task of matching

domain names to IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. Hence, the
domain names and their corresponding IP addresses, must be
unique.

 DNS is a collection of databases that contain information

about domain names and their corresponding IP addresses.

 Domain name servers are computers that translate domain names

to IP addresses.
 This system allows Internet users to deal with the more intuitive
domain names, rather than having to remember a series of numbers.
 Client–Server: Client / Server describes the relationship between two
computer programs in which one program (the client) makes a service
request from another program (the server) which fulfills the request.

 It can be defined as network architecture in which each computer or

process on the network is either a client or a server.

 For example, to check the account balance of one’s bank account from
his computer, a client program in his computer forwards the request
to a server program at the bank. That program may in turn forward
the request to its own client program that sends a request to a
database server at another bank computer to retrieve the account
balance. The balance is returned back to the bank data client, which
in turn serves it back to the client in his personal computer, which
displays the information.
 Client: In Client / Server architecture, client is a computer or process
that request from a server. It is often an application that uses a
graphical user interface and each instance of the client software can
send requests to a server.

 Characteristics of a Client:
• Client is an active (master) computer or process in client / server
architecture.
• Client sends requests to server.
• Client waits for and receives server replies.

 Types of Client: Clients are generally classified in three types:-

i. Fat Clients: A fat client is also known as a Thick client or Rich

client. It is the client that performs the bulk of any data processing
operations itself and do not necessarily rely on the server.

• The fat client is most common in the form of a personal computer as

they can operate independently.
ii. Thin Client: A thin client is a minimal sort of client. Thin clients use
the resources of the host computer. A thin client’s job is generally
just to graphically display pictures provided by an application server,
which performs the bulk of any required data processing.

iii. Hybrid Clients: A hybrid client is also called a smart client. It is

actually a mixture of the above two. Similar to fat client, it processes
locally, but rely on the server for the storage.
 This relatively new approach offers features from both the fat client
and the thin client.

 Server: A server is a computer running a software which is enabling it

to serve specific requests from other computers called ‘clients’.

 Characteristics of a Server:-

• In client / server architecture server is a passive (slave) computer or

process.
• Server waits for requests.

• Upon receipt of requests, server processes them and then replies.

 A server provides many benefits also:-

• Optimization: Server hardware is designed to serve requests from

clients quickly.
• Centralization: Files are in one location for easy administration.

• Security: Multiple levels of permissions can prevent users from doing

damage to files.

• Redundancy and Back-up: Data can be stored in redundant ways

making for quick restore in case of problems.

 A server, like any computer, consists of two parts, the hardware and
the software.

 Server Hardware Basics: Any normal desktop computer could act as

a server, but normally people want something much more robust and
accordingly a standard server hardware includes:-

• Hot-swappable drives (drives that can be replaces while the computer

is running) to speed adding or replacing hard disks.

• The ability to support multiple processors.

• Support for larger amount of RAM.

• Faster input and output.

• Fast network cards.

• Redundant components, such as hard drives and power supplies, to cut

down on the chance of the computer failing.

 Server Software Basics: Server software comes in two categories –

Operating systems and Applications.

i. Network Operating Systems: Just like the various operating

systems for desktop computers, there are many different operating
systems for servers. Ex:- Windows (NT, 2000.2003), Linux, Novel
NetWare.

• All Network Operating System will have many in-built features like
file serving, print serving, backup, and some way to secure those
resources.
• Some Network Operating Systems also include a Web server or mail
server, while in some these have to be bought separately.

ii. Server Applications: Server applications can be designed for nearly

every purpose imaginable, from fax servers to remote access servers.

• Every application will have specific server requirements, and will be

typically designed to run on either Windows NT/2000/2003, Linex, or
NetWare.

• Most of the servers often run multiple applications to serve a variety of

needs.

 TCP / IP: TCP / IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol /

Internet Protocol.

 TCP / IP is a set of protocols that handles data transmitted

across the Internet.
 TCP / IP protocols break up the data into small segments called
packets, sends the address of where the information is to be sent,
send the information, verify the receipt of the information and
reconstruct the data on the other end.

 The Internet is managed by the rules of sending and receiving

information over TCP / IP. As with all other communications
protocol, TCP / IP is composed of layers:-

• IP is responsible for moving packet of data from node to n0de. It

forwards each packet based on a four byte destination address (the IP
number).

o The Internet authorities assign ranges of numbers to different

organizations. The organizations assign groups of their numbers to
the departments.

o IP operates on gateway machines that move data from department to

organization to region and then around the world.
• TCP is responsible for verifying the correct delivery of data from client
to server as data can be lost in the intermediate network.

o TCP adds support to detect errors or lost data and to trigger

retransmission until the data is correctly and completely received.

• Sockets is a name given to the package of subroutines that provide

access to TCP / IP on most system.

 Layers in the Internet Protocol Suite Stack: The IP suite uses

encapsulation to provide abstraction of protocols and services.
Generally a protocol at a higher level uses a protocol at a lower level to
help accomplish its aims.

• The IP stack can be roughly fitted to the four layers of the original TCP
/ IP model:-

o Layer 1: Network Access Layer: This layer describes the physical

equipment necessary for communications, such as twisted pair cables,
the signaling used on that equipment, and the low-level protocols
using that signaling.
o Layer 2: Internet or Internetworking Layer: This layer defines IP
addresses, with many routing schemes for navigating packets form
one IP address to another.

o Layer 3: Host-to-Host (Transport) Layer: This is where flow-

control and connection protocols exist, such as TCP. This layer deals
with opening and maintaining connections, ensuring that packets
are in fact received.

o Layer 4: Process Layer or Application Layer: This is where the

‘higher level’ protocols such as SMTP, FTP, SSH, HTTP, etc. operate.

• In many cases this model has also been divided into five layers where
the Network access layer is splitted into a Data link layer on top of a
Physical layer, and the Internet layer is Called Network layer.
Fig: Layers in TCP/IP
 Web Server: Web server delivers web pages on a computer. It is
responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are
known as Web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along
with optional data contents, which usually are Web pages such as
HTML documents and linked objects.

 Every Web server has an IP address and possibly a domain name. For
example, if we enter the URL http://www.abc.com/index.html in
our browser, this sends a request to the server whose domain name is
abc.com. The server then fetches the page named index.html and
send it to our browser.

 Any computer can be turned into a Web server by installing server

software and connecting the machine to the Internet.

 There are many Web server software applications, including public

domain software from NCSA and Apache, and commercial packages
from Microsoft, Netscape and others.
 Common Features of Web Server: Although Web server programs
differ in detail, they all share some basic common features:-

• Every Web server program operates by accepting HTTP requests from

the network and providing an HTTP response to the requester.

o The HTTP response typically consists of an HTML document, but can

also be a raw text file, an image, or some other type of document; if
something bad is found while trying to serve the client request, a Web
server has to send an error response which may include some custom
HTML or text messages to better explain the problem to end users.

o Usually Web servers have also the capability of logging some detailed
information, about client requests and server responses, to log files;
this allows the Webmaster to collect statistics by running log
analyzers on log files.
 In practice, many Web servers implement the following features
too:-

• Configurability of available features by configuration files or even by

an external user interface.

• Authentication, optional authorization request (request of user

name and password) before allowing access to some or all kind of
resources.

• Handling of not only static content (file content recorded in server’s

file system(s)) but of dynamic content too by supporting one or
more related interfaces (SSI, CGI, SCGE, Fast CGI, PHP, ASP.NET,
Server API such as NSAPI, ISAPI, etc.).

• Module support, in order to allow the extension of server capabilities

by adding or modifying software modules which are linked to the
server software or that are dynamically loaded (or demanded) by the
core server.
• HTTPS support (by SSL or TLS) in order to allow secure (encrypted)
connections to the server on the standard port 443 instead of usual
port 80.

• Content compression (i.e. by zip encoding) to reduce the size of the

responses.

• Virtual Host to serve many web sites using one IP address.

• Large file support to be able to serve files whose size is greater than 2
GB on 32 bit OS.

• Bandwidth throttling to limit the speed of responses in order to not

saturate the network and to be able to serve more clients.

 HTTP & FTP: File Transfer Protocol, or FTP, is a protocol used to

upload files from a workstation to a FTP server or download files from
a FTP server to a workstation. It is the way the files get transferred
from one device to another in order for the files to be available on the
Internet.
 When ftp appears in a URL it means that the user is connecting to a
file server and not a Web server and that some form of file transfer is
going to take place. Most FTP servers require the user to log on to
the server in order to transfer files.

 In contrast, Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, or HTTP, is a protocol

used to transfer files from a Web server onto a browser in order to
view a Web page that is on the Internet.

 Unlike FTP, where entire files are transferred from one device to
another and copied into memory, HTTP only transfers the contents
of a web page into a browser for viewing.

 FTP is a two-way system as files are transferred back and forth

between server and workstation. HTTP is a one-way system as files
are transported only from the server onto the workstation’s browser.

 When http appears in a URL it means that the user is connecting to

a Web server and not to a file server. The files are transferred but not
downloaded and hence not copied into the memory of the receiving
device.
 Middleware: While network protocols such as TCP / IP enable the
exchange of data between client and server, more functionality
required for communication in Internet i.e. between client and
server. For ex:- name-to-address translation, fault tolerance, security
etc.

 To support these additional services a concept known as middleware

evolved.

 The term middleware is used to describe separate products that serve

as the glue between two applications. For ex:- there are a number of
middleware products that link a database system to a web server.

 This technology has evolved during the 1990s to provide for

interoperability in support of the move to client / server architectures.

 It hides the complexity of the extra functionality that client server

processes can invoke.
 Middleware is the layer(s) of software between client and
server processes that deliver the extra functionality.

Fig: Middleware
 Some middleware services are:-

• Remote Data Access (RDA): It provides, SQL access to server-based

DBMS.

• Remote Procedure Calls (RPC): It provides, store-and-forward

message queuing between application processes. (ex:- Microsoft
MAPI-based applications).

• Object Request Brokers (ORB): It provides, invocation of remote

(ex:- server-based) objects by simply sending a message to it.

• Distributed Transaction Processing: It provides, invocation of

remote transactions with transactional (‘all or nothing’) execution.
 Intranet: An intranet is a private computer network that uses
Internet protocols, network connectivity, and possibly the public
telecommunication system to securely share part of an organization’s
information or operations with its employees.

 Sometimes the term refers only to the most visible service, the
internal website. The same concepts and technologies of the Internet
such as clients and servers running on the Internet protocol suite are
used to build an intranet.

 HTTP and other Internet protocols are commonly used as well,

especially FTP and e-mail.

 Uses of Intranet: A very common use of the terms “Intranet” and

“Extranet” is to designate the “private part” of the website, where
only “registered-on-site people” can navigate. This is been enabled
by the “login page” and authentication mechanisms.

 Generally Intranet is for “employee exclusive content” and Extranet

is for “customer / supplier exclusive contents”.
 There does not necessarily have to be any access from the
organization’s internal network to the Internet itself.

 Where there is, there will usually be a gateway with a firewall

through which all access takes place, along with user authentication,
encryption of messages, and the use of virtual private networks
(VPNs) that tunnel through the public network.

 Through such arrangement, company information and computing

resources can be shared by employees working from external
locations.

 Increasingly, intranets are being used to deliver tools and

applications, for example, collaboration or sophisticated corporate
directories, sales and CRM tools, project management, etc. to
advance productivity.
 Intranets are also being used as culture change platforms. For
example, in IBM’s “JAM” program, large number of employees could
discuss key issues in online forums, and key ideas surfaced with the
aid of text analysis tools.
 Intranet traffic, like public-facing web site traffic, is better
understood by using web metrics software to track overall activity, as
well as through surveys of users.

 Intranet User Experience, Editorial, and Technology teams work

together to produce in-house sites.

 Most commonly, intranets are owned by the communications, HR or

CIO areas of large organizations, or some combination of the three.

 Advantages of Intranet:-

i. Workforce Productivity: Intranets can help employees to quickly

find and view information and applications relevant to their roles
and responsibilities.

ii. Time: With intranets, organizations can make more information

available to employees on a ‘pull’ basis (i.e. employees can link to
relevant information at a time which suits them) rather than being
deluged indiscriminately by emails.
iii. Communication: Intranet can serve as powerful tools for
communication within an organization, vertically and horizontally.

iv. Web Publishing: The use of intranet, permits information to be

published using hypermedia technologies.

v. Business Operations & Management: Intranets are also being

used as a platform for developing and deploying applications to
support business operations and decisions across the internet
worked enterprise.

 Disadvantages of Intranet:-

i. Management could lose control of the material provided in the

intranet.

ii. There could be security concerns viz. who accesses the intranet,
abuse of the intranet by users.

iii. Intranets may cause “information overload”, i.e. delivering too much
information to handle.
Fig: Internet, Intranet, Extranet
 Extranet: An extranet is a private network that uses Internet
technology and the public telecommunication system to securely
share part of a business’s information for operations with suppliers,
vendors, partners, customers, or other businesses.

 An extranet can be viewed as part of a company’s intranet that is

extended to users outside the company.

 It is also been described as a “state of mind” in which the Internet is

perceived as a way to do business with other companies as well as to
sell products to customers.

 An extranet requires security and privacy. These can include firewall

server management, the issuance and use of digital certificates or
similar means of user authentication, encryption of messages, and the
use of virtual private networks (VPNs) that tunnel through the public
network.
 Use of Extranet:-

i. Exchange large volumes of data using Electronic Data

Interchange (EDI).

ii. Share product catalogs exclusively with wholesalers or those

“in the trade”.

iii. Collaborate with other companies on joint development

efforts.

iv. Jointly develop and use training programs with other

companies.

v. Provide or access services provided by one company to a group

of other companies, such as an online banking application
managed by one company on behalf of affiliated banks.

vi. Share news of common interest exclusively with partner

companies.
 Contents: Integrating Text and E-Business Applications: In the
currently prevailing new business environment, contents will play an
important role in attracting customers and developing the business.

 Hence, the content for the e-business applications should be relevant

to the requirement and in interesting form. And for this purpose we
would require to support variety of contents as text, audio, still
images, video, and graphics etc.

 Over Internet, contents are published in the form of hypertext or

hypermedia.

 Hypertext: Hypertext consists of text components that can be

rearranged by the reader or read in a non-linear or multi-linear
manner.

 Normally it takes the form of text sections – known as nodes or (on

the web) pages – linked in complex networked structures rather than
in the hierarchical arrangements found on typical Web sites.
 Since any one node can be linked to many others, different readers
can follow different routs through the same work. The term was
coined by Ted Nelson around 1965.

 Hypertext is text, which contains links to other texts. It is not

constrained to be linear.

 The linking of hyper text (to external and internal hypertext files)
can be accomplished in a variety of ways.

Fig: Hypertext
 Hypermedia: Hypermedia is a term used for hypertext, which is not
constrained to be text: it can include graphics, video and sound.
Apparently Ted Nelson was the first to use this term too.

 Hypertext and Hypermedia are concepts, not products.

 Some technologies used to implement hypertext and

hypermedia are:-

• HTML: HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It consists of

standardized codes, or “tags”, that are used to define the structure of
information on a web page.

 It is used to prepare documents for the World Wide Web. A web page
is a single unit of information, often called a document, that is
available on the World Wide Web.

 HTML defines several aspects of a web page including heading levels,

bold, italics, images, paragraph breaks and hypertext links to other
resources.
 HTML can be compared to word processing as it is a way to define
the formats of text in a web page. However, it goes further by also
being able to define placement of graphics and hypertext links.

 HTML is a sub-language of SGML (Standard Generalized Markup

Language). SGML is a system that defines and standardizes the
structure of documents.

 Both SGML and HTML utilize descriptive markup to define the

structure of an area of text. In general terms, descriptive markup
does not specify a particular font or point size for an area of text.
Instead, it describes an area of text as a heading or a caption.

 Hence, in HTML, text is marked as a heading, subheading,

numbered list, bold, italic, etc.

 HTML is standardized and portable. A document that has been

prepared using HTML markup “tags” can be viewed using a variety
of web browsers.
 A browser interprets the tags in an HTML file and presents the file as
a formatted, readable web page. In addition HTML documents can
be viewed on all types of systems such as Macintosh, PC and UNIX.

 HTTP: HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. It is a set of

rules, or protocol, that governs the transfer of hypertext between two
or more computers. The www encompasses the universe of
information that is available via HTTP.

 It is based on the Client / Server principle. HTTP allows ‘computer A’

(the client) to establish a connection to ‘computer B’ (the server) and
make a request.

 The server accepts the connection initiated by the client and sends
back a response. The HTTP request identifies the resource that the
client is interested in and tells the server what ‘action’ to take on the
resource.

 When a user selects a hypertext link, the client program on their

computer uses HTTP to contact the server, identify a resource, and ask
the server to respond with an action.
 The server accepts the request, and then uses HTTP to respond to or
perform the action.

 HTTP also provides access to other Internet protocols, among them:

• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

• Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)

• Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP)

• WAIS

• Gopher

• Telnet and TN3270