Mechanisms and Processes of the Internet :: Computers Technology Web Essays

Mechanisms and Processes of the Internet Electronic commerce can be defined as the conduct of commerce in goods and services, with the assistance of telecommunications and telecommunications-based tools. Here, the term telecommunications can mean any existing telecommunication networks such as Public Switched Telephone Network, Integrated Services Digital Network, or even Wireless Networks. However the major and the most important telecommunication network of E-commerce is the Internet. The great possibility and potential of E-commerce has been realized with the development of the Internet. Therefore understanding how the Internet works is quite important to better understand E-commerce and to develop E-commerce applications. In this paper I will discuss the mechanisms and process of the Internet. The structure of the paper is as follows:  · The Basic Process  · Mechanisms of the Internet  · IP address and Name Servers  · Ports and Protocols II. The Basic Process When we surf the web, we type any URL in to our browser, and the desired page pop up on our screen. At the most basic level possible, the following diagram shows what happened: Our browser formed a connection to a web server, requested a page and received it. Here are the basic steps that occurred behind the scenes:  · The browser broke the URL into 3 parts: 1) The protocol ("http"), 2) the server name ("www.howstuffworks.com"), and 3) the file name ("web-server.htm").  · The browser communicated with a name server to translate the server name "www.howstuffworks.com" into an IP Address that it can use to connect to the server machine.  · The browser then formed a connection to the server at that IP address on port 80.  · Following the HTTP protocol, the browser sent a GET request to the server asking for the file "web-server.htm".  · The server returned the HTML text for the web page to the browser. The browser read the HTML tags and formatted the page onto your screen. III. Mechanisms of the Internet 1. Mechanisms The Internet is a gigantic collection of millions of computers that are all linked together on a computer network.