Page 68 - DCAP306_DCAP511_E-COMMERCE_AND_E-BUSINESS

Unit 5: Intranet and Extranet for E-Commerce

The information about different locations is communicated only once between trading partners and
then queried by referring to the unique standard location number.

5.3 Overview of Internet Bandwidth and Technology Issues
Bandwidth is defined as the rate at which data is sent to or received from the Internet. Bandwidth is
used to measure Internet traffic. It is measured in terms of megabits per second (mbps). Bandwidth
represents the number of bits per second of data sent to or received from the Internet. Several factors
need to be considered while choosing the necessary bandwidth for a business. Bandwidth management
involves monitoring and managing available resources and optimizing the resources to ensure value for
money.
E-Commerce on the Internet faces a number of challenges. These challenges can be technological, legal,
or regulatory.
The legal and regulatory challenges include:
1. Role of governments and nations
2. Customs and tax uncertainties
3. Lack of consistent rules and policies
The growth of e-commerce depends on the reliability, bandwidth, and security of the Internet. The
countries are moving at great speed to solve the problems of bandwidth and technology, in order to
improve Internet commerce.
Let us discuss the Internet bandwidth and technology issues in detail.

5.3.1 Bandwidth Issues
Bandwidth is a resource that is expensive, in demand, and therefore must be managed accordingly.
Some of the technological challenges are:
1. Available bandwidth is limited and insufficient to meet demand
2. Interoperability of technology
3. Bandwidth is expensive

4. Lack of standards
5. Expanding bandwidth capacity is limited due to finances, supply, and technology
The bandwidth issues related to Internet are managed by networking standards such as Asynchronous
Transfer Mode (ATM) and TCP/IP suite of protocols for interconnection.
ATM Technology

The use of networks has undergone major changes. Asynchronous Transfer Mode is the technology that
serves to solve the bandwidth and network problems. By means of ATM, data is broken into small
constant sized byte packets and sent over the network through a series of switches. ATM is the
statistical multiplexing of the data packets. The small and constant packet size allows switching to be
carried out in hardware, rather than implementing the routing in software.
A virtual circuit is set up, which reserves a fixed bandwidth for the duration of the communication. This
assures that bandwidth is available when required. The ability of ATM to reserve dedicated amount of
bandwidth for individual connections allows better management of different types of traffic going over
the network. Network management software permits small amounts of bandwidth to be put aside for
simple transactions, like e-mails, while allowing more bandwidth for resource demanding multimedia
applications.
The prominence of various technologies has made ATM more attractive to network administrators.

The technologies that are included in ATM are video conferencing, multimedia
presentations and remote lecturing.

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