E-COMMERCE

CHAPTER 2: E-MAIL AND INTERNET

2.1 Computer communication system

Computer communication system involves communicative transactions that

occur through the use of two or more networked computers .While the term has
traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer –oriented
mediated formats, e.g instant messages, E-mails, Chat rooms etc. It has also
been applied to other forms of text-based interaction, such as text –messaging.

The objective is to allow computers to communicate with each others as open

system ,irrespective of make, location an operating system .This requires the
communicating entities to agree on the format of the data being exchanged as
well as to lay down the procedures for controlling and regulating information flow
and detecting and correcting errors that creep in .There must be some standards
have to be established for the physical/electrical characteristics that allows
information flow across communication networks .These refers to be protocols
that govern communication between computers connected in a computer
network .

2.2 The ISO OSI model is explained below. The seven layers of the OSI model
are:

• Application
• Presentation
• Session
• Transport
• Network
• Data Link
• Physical

1 Application layer:

This layer provides a means for the user to access information on the network
through an application. Many user applications that need to communicate over
the network interact with the Application layer protocol directly. The user
applications are not part of OSI Application layer, use the networking services
offered by the networking protocol suite. Application layer functions typically
include identifying communication partners, and determining availability of
required resources. Some examples of application layer implementations include
Telnet, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).

2 Presentation layer:

Presentation layer converts local host computer data representations into a

standard network format for transmission on the network. On the receiving side,
it changes the network format into the appropriate host computer's format so
that data can be utilized independent of the host computer. ASCII and EBCDIC
conversions, cryptography, and the like are handled here.

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Examples of Presentation layer coding and conversion schemes include common
data representation

formats, conversion of character representation formats, common data

compression schemes, and common data encryption schemes.

Presentation layer implementations are not typically associated with a particular

protocol stack. Some well-known standards for video include QuickTime and
Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG). QuickTime is an Apple Computer
specification for video and audio, and MPEG is a standard for video compression
and coding.

3. Session layer:

The session layer establishes, manages, and terminates communication

sessions. Communication sessions consist of service requests and service
responses that occur between applications located in different network devices.
These requests and responses are coordinated by protocols implemented at the
session layer. Some examples of session-layer implementations include
AppleTalk's Zone Information Protocol (ZIP), and Decent Phase Session Control
Protocol (SCP).

4. Transport layer:

Transport layer is responsible for providing reliable service between the hosts.
Upper layer datagram’s are broken down into manageable datagram’s and then
appropriate header information (such as sequence number, port number, etc.) is
added to the datagram before passing it on to the Network layer. Two frequently
used transport protocols are the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and the
UDP (User Datagram Protocol).

Important features of Transport layer:

• Transport layer ensures reliable service.

• Breaks the message (from session’s layer) into smaller datagram’s, and
appends appropriate unit header information.
• Responsible for communicating with the Session layer

Important features of TCP/UDP:

• TCP/IP widely used protocol for Transport/Network layers

• TCP: (Transport Control Protocol) TCP ensures that a packet has reached
its intended destination by using an acknowledgement. If not, it
retransmits the lost messages. Hence, TCP is called a connection oriented
protocol.
• UDP (Universal Data gram Protocol): UDP simply transmits packets over
the internet. It does not wait for an acknowledgement. It is the
responsibility of upper layer protocols to ensure that the information had
reached the intended partner(s). Hence, UDP is often called
connectionless protocol.
• Application programs that do not need connection-oriented protocol
generally use UDP.

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5. Network layer:

Network layer is responsible for the routing of packets through the entire
network. The layer uses logical addressing for this purpose. Note that the
physical address (like MAC address) keeps changing from hop to hop when a
packet travels from source to destination. As a result, an address that doesn't
change is required to ensure continuity between hops. This is nothing but logical
address. For IP networks, IP address is the logical address; and for Novell
network, IPX address is the logical address, and so on. This layer also provides
for congestion control, and accounting information for the network. IP (Internet
Protocol) is an example of a network layer protocol.

6. Data link layer:

Data link layer provides delivery of information frames between communicating

partners. This layer is responsible for flow regulation, error detection and
correction.

Consists of two sub layers:

1. Logical Link Control (LLC): Defines how data is transferred over the cable and
provides data link service to the higher layers.

2. Medium Access Control (MAC): Controls media access by regulating the

communicating nodes using pre-defined set of rules.

Different Data link layer protocols define different network and protocol
characteristics, including physical addressing, network topology, error
notification, sequencing of frames, and flow control. Physical addressing (as
opposed to logical addressing) defines how devices are addressed at the data
link layer.

7. Physical layer:

This is the bottom-most layer of the OSI model. The Physical layer handles the
communications across the physical medium. The physical medium could be
made up of wired electrical signals, or light, or radio (wireless) signals. Physical
layer specifications define characteristics such as media, data rates, maximum
transmission distances, and physical connectors.

2.3 What is electronic mail?

Electronic mail or ``e-mail'' does not require detailed explanation, since its basic
concepts are identical to those of traditional surface mail: there is a sender who
sends some written message to one or more addressees with the help of a
computer program. Although the message is sent directly to a certain computer,
it usually goes through a number of transferring computers and this may take
some minutes or even one or two hours if there is a lot of international traffic on
the net. For the sake of convenience the subject and date of the message is
indicated in the header together with the e-mail address of both the sender and
the recipient. For technical reasons the e-mail header may also contain some
additional information referring to the route or the content of the message.

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E-mail addresses have a rigid structure that indicates the user's name on the net
and the server computer that offers the mailing services. A typical e-mail
address looks like this:

[email protected]

Contrary to phone numbers, e-mail addresses usually give some information as

to their owner: the above (fictitious) address belongs to Joe Smith at the server
computer of the Faculty of Arts, University of Toronto, Canada.

Due to the diversity of e-mail systems it is impossible to give a general guide;

however, the existing systems can be divided into two major groups: those
academics that use campus-wide networks may check their mail on network
terminals by logging in to the server computer. Those who work outside the
campus usually access the server via ordinary phone line. There are pros and
cons to both methods, but PC mail software is usually more user-friendly than
those of server machines. As the WWW tends to become a shell for all other
forms of Internet communication, popular web-browsers (e.g., Netscape) have
started to include mail functionality. These mail functions are very easy to use
and offer a straightforward solution for including WWW references into mail
messages, but usually they offer fewer services than dedicated mail software.

Although there are a number of different e-mail systems and software packages,
international standards ensure compatibility between them. This is, however,
only a relatively low level of compatibility: only the characters of the Standard
English alphabet can be transferred safely via e-mail. Technologies and
guidelines have been developed to include accented characters, text formatting
(e.g. bold, italic, etc.) and even images or sound files into the message body, but
so far none of these has reached the status of a generally accepted international
standard. The so-called MIME (or Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) coding is
the method most widely supported by mail software. Other methods (e.g.
``uuencode'') encode the entire message file to be sent; thus a word-processor
file with rich formatting (footnotes, columns, etc.) can be sent without any
compromise. However, these files can only be read after correct decoding. If
both sender and receiver use the same modern e-mail software they do not have
to bother with coding, it is done automatically. Modern software also allows the
user to attach word-processor (or image and sound) files to the message, thus in
fact combining the two methods discussed above.

E-mail offers all the functions of paper-based services, but it is usually faster and
easier to use: there is no need to buy envelope and stamps, and no queuing in
the post office. Moreover e-mail lacks all the secondary ``physical'' features of
traditional letters: no header, handwriting, and individual signature. Perhaps due
to this and also to its rapid and highly convenient nature, the style of e-mail
messages usually becomes far more informal than that of traditional letters.
Letters sent via e-mail are often fragmented; sentences are long or incorrectly
segmented as if the text were the transcription of an oral conversation. The
spontaneous character of e-mail is often enhanced with so-called ``emoticons'',
special-character-combinations used as graphic indication of emotions in the
linear text: ``:-)'' means ``I'm joking,'' ``:-('' stands for ``I'm sorry.'' In other
words standards of electronic letter- writing are different - and from a certain
point of view inferior - to those of its paper-based predecessor. For example,
most Hungarian e-mail users are ready to give up the use of accented characters
as their transmission is unreliable in present-day e-mail systems - in spite of the

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fact that the Hungarian writing system includes a number of such characters.
Some consider this an unfortunate compromise or a deterioration of the
language, while others find it the victory of practice, because the lack of accents
causes misunderstanding only in relatively rare cases.

2.4 Internet Protocol: IP Addresses

Every machine on the Internet has a unique identifying number, called

an IP Address. The IP stands for Internet Protocol, which is the
language that computers use to communicate over the Internet. A
protocol is the pre-defined way that someone who wants to use a service
talks with that service. The "someone" could be a person, but more often
it is a computer program like a Web browser.
A typical IP address looks like this:
216.27.61.137
To make it easier for us humans to remember, IP addresses are normally
expressed in decimal format as a dotted decimal number like the one
above. But computers communicate in binary form. Look at the same IP
address in binary:
11011000.00011011.00111101.10001001
The four numbers in an IP address are called octets, because they each
have eight positions when viewed in binary form. If you add all the
positions together, you get 32, which is why IP addresses are considered
32-bit numbers. Since each of the eight positions can have two different
states (1 or zero), the total number of possible combinations per octet is
28 or 256. So each octet can contain any value between zero and 255.
Combine the four octets and you get 232 or a possible 4,294,967,296
unique values!
Out of the almost 4.3 billion possible combinations, certain values are
restricted from use as typical IP addresses. For example, the IP address
0.0.0.0 is reserved for the default network and the address
255.255.255.255 is used for broadcasts.
The octets serve a purpose other than simply separating the numbers.
They are used to create classes of IP addresses that can be assigned to a
particular business, government or other entity based on size and need.
The octets are split into two sections: Net and Host. The Net section
always contains the first octet. It is used to identify the network that a
computer belongs to. Host (sometimes referred to as Node) identifies the
actual computer on the network. The Host section always contains the last
octet. There are five IP classes plus certain special addresses

2.5 MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard which was

proposed by Bell Communications in 1991 in order to expand upon the limited
capabilities of email, and in particular to allow documents (such as images,
sound, and text) to be inserted in a message.

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Using headers, MIME describes the type of message content and the encoding
used.

MIME adds the following features to email service:

• Be able to send multiple attachments with a single message;

• Unlimited message length;
• Use of character sets other than ASCII code;
• Use of rich text (layouts, fonts, colours, etc)
• Binary attachments (executables, images, audio or video files, etc.), which
may be divided if needed.
The primary data types, sometimes called "discrete data types," are:

• text: readable text data text/rfc822 [RFC822]; text/plain [RFC2646];

text/html [RFC2854] .
• image: binary data representing digital images: image/jpeg; image/gif;
image/png.
• audio: digital sound data: audio/basic; audio/wav
• video: video data: video/mpeg
• application: Other binary data: application/octet-stream; application/pdf

2.6 INTERNET

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use

the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide.
It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic,
business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a
broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The
Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the
inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the
infrastructure to support electronic mail.

Most traditional communications media including telephone, music, film, and

television are reshaped or redefined by the Internet, giving birth to new services
such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) . Newspaper, book and other print
publishing are adapting to Web site technology, or are reshaped
into blogging and web feeds. The Internet has enabled or accelerated new forms
of human interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social
networking. Online shopping has boomed both for major retail outlets and
small artisans and traders. Business-to-business and financial services on the
Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.

The origins of the Internet reach back to research of the 1960s, commissioned by
the United States government in collaboration with private commercial interests

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to build robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks. The funding of
a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, as well as
private funding for other commercial backbones, led to worldwide participation in
the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many
networks. The commercialization of what was by the 1990s an international
network resulted in its popularization and incorporation into virtually every
aspect of modern human life. As of 2009, an estimated quarter of Earth's
population used the services of the Internet.

The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological

implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets
its own standards. Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name
spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain
Name System, are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical
underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an
activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of
loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by
contributing technical expertise.

2.7 Introduction to Computer Network Protocols

In computer protocols means a set of rules, a communication language or set of

standards between two or more computing devices. Protocols exist at the several levels of
the OSI (open system interconnectivity) layers model. In the telecommunication system,
there are one more protocols at each layer of the telephone exchange. On the internet,
there is a suite of the protocols known as TCP/IP protocols that are consisting of
transmission control protocol, internet protocol, file transfer protocol, dynamic host
configuration protocol, Border gateway protocol and a number of other protocols.
In the telecommunication, a protocol is set of rules for data representation, authentication,
and error detection. The communication protocols in the computer networking are
intended for the secure, fast and error free data delivery between two communication
devices. Communication protocols follow certain rules for the transmission of the data.

Protocols Properties

Different protocols perform different functions so it is difficult to generalize the properties

of the protocols. There are some basic properties of most of the protocols.
• Detection of the physical (wired or wireless connection)
• Handshaking
• How to format a message.
• How to send and receive a message.
• Negotiation of the various connections
• Correction of the corrupted or improperly formatted messages.
• Termination of the session.

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The widespread use of the communication protocols is a prerequisite to the
internet. The term TCP/IP refers to the protocols suite and a pair of the TCP and
IP protocols are the most important internet communication protocols. Most
protocols in communication are layered together where the various tasks listed
above are divided. Protocols stacks refer to the combination of the different
protocols. The OSI reference model is the conceptual model that is used to
represent the protocols stacks. There are different network protocols that
perform different functions. Following is the description of the some of the most
commonly used protocols.

HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol)

Hypertext transfer protocol is a method of transmitting the information on the

web. HTTP basically publishes and retrieves the HTTP pages on the World Wide
Web. HTTP is a language that is used to communicate between the browser and
web server. The information that is transferred using HTTP can be plain text,
audio, video, images, and hypertext. HTTP is a request/response protocol
between the client and server. Many proxies, tunnels, and gateways can be
existing between the web browser (client) and server (web server). An HTTP
client initializes a request by establishing a TCP connection to a particular port
on the remote host (typically 80 or 8080). An HTTP server listens to that port and
receives a request message from the client. Upon receiving the request, server
sends back 200 OK messages, its own message, an error message or other
message.

POP3 (Post Office Protocol)

In computing, e-mail clients such as (MS outlook, outlook express and

thunderbird) use Post office Protocol to retrieve emails from the remote server
over the TCP/IP connection. Nearly all the users of the Internet service providers
use POP 3 in the email clients to retrieve the emails from the email servers. Most
email applications use POP protocol.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a protocol that is used to send the email
messages between the servers. Most email systems and email clients use the
SMTP protocol to send messages to one server to another. In configuring an
email application, you need to configure POP, SMTP and IMAP protocols in your
email software. SMTP is a simple, text based protocol and one or more recipient
of the message is specified and then the message is transferred. SMTP
connection is easily tested by the Telnet utility. SMTP uses the by default TCP
port number 25

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

FTP or file transfer protocol is used to transfer (upload/download) data from one
computer to another over the internet or through or computer network. FTP is a
most commonly communication protocol for transferring the files over the
internet. Typically, there are two computers are involved in the transferring the
files a server and a client. The client computer that is running FTP client software
such as Cuteftp and AceFTP etc initiates a connection with the remote computer
(server). After successfully connected with the server, the client computer can

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perform a number of the operations like downloading the files, uploading,
renaming and deleting the files, creating the new folders etc. Virtually operating
system supports FTP protocols.

IP (Internet Protocol)

An Internet protocol (IP) is a unique address or identifier of each computer or

communication devices on the network and internet. Any participating computer
networking device such as routers, computers, printers, internet fax machines
and switches may have their own unique IP address. Personal information about
someone can be found by the IP address. Every domain on the internet must
have a unique or shared IP address.

DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)

The DHCP or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is a set of rules used by a

communication device such as router, computer or network adapter to allow the
device to request and obtain and IP address from a server which has a list of the
larger number of addresses. DHCP is a protocol that is used by the network
computers to obtain the IP addresses and other settings such as gateway, DNS,
subnet mask from the DHCP server. DHCP ensures that all the IP addresses are
unique and the IP address management is done by the server and not by the
human. The assignment of the IP addresses is expires after the predetermined
period of time. DHCP works in four phases known as DORA such as Discover,
Observe, Request and Authorize

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)

The Internet Message Access Protocol known as IMAP is an application layer

protocol that is used to access to access the emails on the remote servers. POP3
and IMAP are the two most commonly used email retrieval protocols. Most of the
email clients such as outlook express, thunderbird and MS outlooks support POP3
and IMAP. The email messages are generally stored on the email server and the
users generally retreive these messages whether by the web browser or email
clients. IMAP is generally used in the large networks. IMAP allows users to access
their messages instantly on their systems.

2.8 Internet services

The Internet has become one of the biggest worldwide systems for sending
and receiving information. Even though even knows about the Internet you
would be surprised to know that many people are still very unaware of how
the Internet actually works. The biggest portion of all the Internet traffic is E-
mail. Many people now use e-mail instead of writing letters. Another very
popular feature of the Internet is the Newsgroups.

Many of these new groups offer access to group discussions around the world
on specific topics. There are actually thousands of newsgroups on the web
that you can sign up for. Just going to www.abc.com, and clicking on the news
tab will get you the latest news and the latest weather updates. The original

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 purpose of the Internet was for global information exchange. It is also a great
source of information for your children. You no longer need to take the trip to
the Library. Now you can have the Library right in your own home. Just by
typing in a simple word phrase in the search box will get you tons of
information that you may need.

The web supports the storage and retrieval, of photographs, graphics,

animations, videos and sounds. When you are using the Web Browser you can
find anything easily and quickly. The greatest benefit of the Internet has been
to businesses and other organizations. It is a great way to advertise your
product or business, as well as various services that you may offer. Once you
make your web page known you will be amazed at how much your business
and your profits will increase. Another very popular feature is the Chatting
feature. Instead of using the telephone you can just chat with another person
over the Internet. Although when it comes to chatting you will have to be
careful. Make sure that you only chat with those people that you know.

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