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1. Provide a brief history of the Internet. Also, what were the main forces that led to the commercialization of the Internet' The Internet was the result of some visionary thinking by people in the early 1960s that saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields. J.C.R. Licklider an associate professor of MIT, where he served on a committee that established MIT Lincoln Laboratory and established a psychology program for engineering students, first proposed a global network of computers in 1962, and moved over to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in late 1962 to head the work to develop it. Leonard Kleinrock an engineer and computer scientist, and a computer science professor of MIT and later UCLA developed the theory of packet switching, which was to form the basis of Internet connections. Lawrence Roberts of MIT connected a Massachusetts computer with a California computer in 1965 over dial-up telephone lines. It showed the feasibility of wide area networking, but also showed that the telephone line's circuit switching was inadequate. Kleinrock's packet switching theory was confirmed. Roberts moved over to DARPA in 1966 and developed his plan for ARPANET. These visionaries and many more left unnamed here are the real founders of the Internet. The Internet, then known as ARPANET, was brought online in 1969 under a contract let by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) which initially connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern US (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UCSB, and the University of Utah). The contract was carried out by BBN of Cambridge, MA under Bob Kahn and went online in December 1969. By June 1970, MIT, Harvard, BBN, and Systems Development Corp (SDC) in Santa Monica, Cal. were added. By January 1971, Stanford, MIT's Lincoln Labs, Carnegie-Mellon, and Case-Western Reserve U were added. In months to come, NASA/Ames, Mitre, Burroughs, RAND, and the U of Illinois plugged in. The Internet matured in the 70's as a result of the TCP/IP architecture first proposed by Bob Kahn an American Internet pioneer, engineer and computer scientist, at BBN and further developed by Kahn and Vint Cerf an American computer scientist, who is recognized as one of the fathers of the Internet" at Stanford and others throughout the 70's. It was adopted by the Defense Department in 1980 replacing the earlier Network Control Protocol (NCP) and universally adopted by 1983. Since the Internet was initially funded by the government, it was originally limited to research, education, and government uses. Commercial uses were prohibited unless they directly served the goals of research and education. This policy continued until the early 1990's, when independent commercial networks began to grow. It then it then became possible to route traffic communication across the country from one commercial site to another without passing through the government funded NSNNet the Internet backbone. Delphi was the first national commercial online service to offer Internet access to its subscribers. It opened up an email connection in July of 1992 and full Internet service in November of 1992. All pretenses of limitations on commercial use disappeared in May of 1995 when the National Science Foundation ended its sponsorship of the Internet backbone, and all traffic relied on commercial networks. AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe came online. Since commercial usage was so widespread by this time and educational institutions had been paying their own way for some time, the loss of NSF funding had no appreciable effects on costs. The Internet was born out of the need for the U.S. government, specifically the Defense Department, to communicate with its weapons installation distributions all over the world. This idea, in the hands of researchers and scientists evolved even further allowing those researchers the capability to communicate with their colleagues at other universities. As personal computers became more popular and affordable, companies increasingly wanted to construct their own networks. This all led to the dramatic increase in business activity, but the commercialization of the Internet was really spurred by the emergence of the World Wide Web. The software that allowed computers to communicate while on the Internet is still the largest category of traffic today. 2. Use your favorite search engine to search for more information about broadband satellite connections, DSL connections, wireless connections, and cable connections. Broadband Satellite Just as satellites orbiting the earth provide necessary links for telephone and television service, they can also provide links for broadband. Satellite broadband is another form of wireless broadband. However Satellite Internet connections are fairly expensive. They provide high-speed Internet to rural areas and places without DSL or cable connections available. Satellite Internet connections are either one- or two-way connections, according to Teach-Nology.com. A one-way connection uses the satellite technology to receive signals. You would still need a telephone line and modem to send signals. The two-way variant can handle both receiving and sending. Satellite offers an average download speed of 600 Kbps with an upload rate averaging 128 Kbps. Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) DSL is a wire line transmission technology that transmits data faster over traditional copper telephone lines already installed to homes and businesses. DSL-based broadband provides transmission speeds ranging from several hundred Kbps to millions of bits per second (Mbps). The availability and speed of your DSL service may depend on the distance from your home or business to the closest telephone company facility. DSL stands for digital line subscriber, and it is a form of broadband Internet access. DSL offers 400 to 650 Kbps in download speed and around 128 to 256 Kbps for upload speed. DSL connections use a phone line and a special modem to connect, but they do not interfere with telephone operations, unlike dial-up connections. DSL is a popular choice in urban areas where people are often close enough to a hub to pick up the signal it sends out. The following are types of DSL transmission technologies: • Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) Used primarily by residential customers, such as Internet surfers, who receive a lot of data but do not send much. ADSL typically provides faster speed in the downstream direction than the upstream direction. ADSL allows faster downstream data transmission over the same line used to provide voice service, without disrupting regular telephone calls on that line. • Symmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) Used typically by businesses for services such as video conferencing, which need significant bandwidth both upstream and downstream. Faster forms of DSL typically available to businesses include: • High data rate Digital Subscriber Line (HDSL); and • Very High data rate Digital Subscriber Line (VDSL). Wireless Wireless Internet access, commonly known as a "hot spot," is a local area network (LAN) run by radio waves rather than wires. Wireless Internet access is broadcast from a central hub, which is a hard-wired device that actually brings in the Internet connection. The hub, located at the main computer system or server, broadcasts Internet connectivity to clients, which is basically anyone within receiving range who is equipped with a wireless LAN card. In the home, a desktop system setup for wireless Internet access will broadcast connectivity throughout the immediate area. Any family member with a laptop or desktop in another room can connect wirelessly to the Internet to share the main connection. Neighbors may also be able to access this wireless connection, which is why most wireless LANs are configured with password security. In this case, any machine that wishes to get wireless Internet access must first complete a "handshake" with the LAN, in which the password is requested. If the proper password is not supplied, access is denied. Security protocols for wireless Internet access have improved with Wi Fi Protected Access (WPA) and Wi Fi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) options. While wireless Internet access is very convenient in the home, it can be even more so in the workplace. A wired network can not only be very time consuming to install throughout a building, it is also very expensive. Ethernet cables used to connect client machines might need to be routed through walls, ceilings, and floors. In the past, this disadvantage was sometimes overlooked due to the advantages of greater security and faster data transfer speeds through Ethernet cables. Cable Cable connections use a special cable modem to connect to the Internet through a coaxial cable. Cable Internet is the easiest and most common form of high-speed Internet connection, according to Teach-Nology.com. Cable has an average download speed of 400 Kbps and upload speed of up to 128 Kbps. Cable's largest disadvantage is that you share the connection with other subscribers, which causes the connection to slow down when there are more computers using the line. Prepare a four-column table (one column for each technology) in which you list the advantages and disadvantages of each connection method. Include at least two advantages and two disadvantages for each connection method. Broadband Satellite Advantages DSL Advantages Wireless Advantages Cable Advantages • Satellite broadband Internet doesn't rely on cables or phone lines to transmit service making it available to customers in remote rural areas. • No need to dial or wait for internet access, satellite broadband gives an instant online connection. • Broadband satellite internet uses the enormous bandwidth and geographical coverage of orbiting satellites. • Always on and you can use your phone line for voice services at the same time. • Far higher speed than dial up connections (256 KB - 1.5 MB vs. 56 KB). • DSL is more secure than Cable. • The companies that offer DSL will usually provide the modem as part of the installation. • No new wiring necessary (will use your existing phone line). • A network can be set up without cabling and wiring. • Economical networking solution. • Provides access to the internet in outdoor areas. • Roaming is supported. A user can move from one access point to another. • A large number of hotspots are available worldwide. • Available on a wider scale than DSL • Generally faster than DSL 4MB - 12MB potential. • Your cable company will probably supply you with the required modem. • You don't need a phone line, so using VoIP as your primary phone service is more convenient. Disadvantages Disadvantages Disadvantages Disadvantages • More expensive than DSL and cable • Large setup fee. Expensive equipment upfront. Has to be set up by trained technician. • Short delay of signal transmission may affect real time applications • Fair access policy limits the ability to download large files in reasonable amount of time • Connection speed is slower than DSL and cable • A DSL connection is faster when you are closer to your provider's central office. • The connection is faster for receiving data than it is for sending data over the internet. • The service is not available everywhere. • Price increases if you want the fastest speeds. • You need a phone line from the local phone service, so you can't change your main phone number to VoIP unless you get a stand-alone, or Naked DSL service and those are generally more expensive. • High power consumption rate for laptop computers • Wireless encryption standard is easy to break • Wi-Fi network has limited range • Overlapping access points can interfere signal transmission • Subject to security risks if wireless encryption is not enabled • Internet connection speed of wireless network is lower than that of wired network • Less secure than DSL Service • Connection shared with others therefore speeds vary accordingly. • May require additional wiring to get the cable connection to your computer location. • Usually more expensive than DSL. 3. Describe and briefly discuss two important measures of a web site’s performance' Measurements of a website’s are: the number of visitors, ease of function, usefulness or in formativeness, reliability. One solution does not fit all. What may be a good measurement indicator to one website may not be adequate for another. Keeping this in mind with the goals, one website may want to measure visitors to justify rates to online advertisers. Another site may want members or subscribers to sign up for an e-mail newsletter; another may want to measure actual leads and/or sales. Keeping this in mind, the campaign manager may realize that the website that is bringing them the most visitors may not be bringing them the most leads and/or sales. It is important to look at the web analysis as part of the solution. 4. Provide a brief definition of the term “middleware.” Explain why middleware can be difficult to write and test. In the computer industry, middleware is a general term for any programming that serves to "glue together" or mediate between two separate and often already existing programs. A common application of middleware is to allow programs written for access to a particular database to access other databases. Typically, middleware programs provide messaging services so that different applications can communicate. The systematic tying together of disparate applications, often through the use of middleware, is known as enterprise application integration (EAI). References http://www.Bing.com http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml http://www.middleware.org/ Schneider, G. (2009). Electronic commerce: 2010 custom edition(8th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.