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lectronic commerce or e-commerce refers to a wide range of online business activities for products and
services. [1] It also pertains to any form of business transaction in which the parties interact electronically rather
than by physical exchanges or direct physical contact.
E-commerce is usually associated with buying and selling over the Internet, or conducting any
transaction involving the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods or services through a computermediated network.
A more complete definition is: E-commerce is the use of electronic communications and digital
information processing technology in business transactions to create, transform, and redefine
relationships for value creation between or among organizations, and between organizations and
individuals.
Types of e-commerce:
There are 6 basic types of e-commerce:
1.
Business-to-Business (B2B)
2.
Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
3.
Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)
4.
Consumer-to-Business (C2B).
5.
Business-to-Administration (B2A)
6.
Consumer-to-Administration (C2A)
1. Business-to-Business (B2B)
Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce encompasses all electronic transactions of
goods or services conducted between companies. Producers and traditional commerce
wholesalers typically operate with this type of electronic commerce.
2. Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
The Business-to-Consumer type of e-commerce is distinguished by the establishment of
electronic business relationships between businesses and final consumers. It corresponds
to the retail section of e-commerce, where traditional retail trade normally operates.
When compared to buying retail in traditional commerce, the consumer usually has more
information available in terms of informative content and there is also a widespread idea
that youll be buying cheaper, without jeopardizing an equally personalized customer
service, as well as ensuring quick processing and delivery of your order.
3. Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)
Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) type e-commerce encompasses all electronic transactions
of goods or services conducted between consumers. Generally, these transactions are
conducted through a third party, which provides the online platform where the
transactions are actually carried out.
4. Consumer-to-Business (C2B)
In C2B there is a complete reversal of the traditional sense of exchanging goods. This
type of e-commerce is very common in crowd sourcing based projects. A large number of
individuals make their services or products available for purchase for companies seeking
precisely these types of services or products.
5. Business-to-Administration (B2A)
This part of e-commerce encompasses all transactions conducted online between
companies and public administration. This is an area that involves a large amount and a
variety of services, particularly in areas such as fiscal, social security, employment, legal
documents and registers, etc. These types of services have increased considerably in
recent years with investments made in e-government.
6. Consumer-to-Administration (C2A)
The Consumer-to-Administration model encompasses all electronic transactions
conducted between individuals and public administration.
Examples of applications include:
Advantages of e-commerce
Convenience & Easiness
Disadvantages of e-commerce
The main disadvantages associated with e-commerce are the following:
Product comparisons can improve a shopping experience and increase sales. Consumers typically shop for
similar features. A product comparison feature on product pages can help them view features side-by-side,
instead of flipping through many pages. Many shopping carts are starting to incorporate this feature into their
platforms.
6. Live Chat
Live chat is very important to an ecommerce site. This feature should be site wide, but especially on every
product page. Live help can help close the sale. Customer questions can be answered immediately. There are
many live help platforms in the marketplace to choose from.
7. Product Demos
Product demos are increasingly popular. They inform the consumer and can really help decrease return rates.
Employees of Office Depot recently displayed that companys product demonstration feature at an Internet
Retailer conference, stating it sharply increased sales. Also, TigerDirect.com uses product demos to show,
explain and educate consumers about that specific product.
Bus Topology
Ring Topology
Star Topology
Tree Topology
Mesh Topology
STAR Topology
In Star Topology, all the cables run from the computers to a central location, where they are connected by a
hub. Hub is a device used to extend a network so that additional work stations can be attached.
In Star topology each node is connected to single centrally located server, using its own dedicated segment
of cable. A star topology is a LAN architecture in which endpoints on the network are connected to a
common central hub, or switch, by dedicated links. In this topology each node is connected to a centralised
switch by a dedicated physical link. The switch provides a path between any two devices wishing to
communicate, either physically in a circuit switch or logically in a packet switch.
Tree Topology
This is a network topology containing zero or more nodes/computers linked together in a hierarchical
fashion. The topmost node is called the root. The root may have zero or more child nodes, connected by
edges (links); the root is the parent root to its children. Each node can have in turn zero or more nodes of its
own. Nodes sharing the same parents is called siblings. Every node in the tree has exactly one parent node
(except root which has no parents), and all nodes in the tree are descendants of the root node. These
relationships ensure that there is one and only one path from one node to any other node in the tree.
A tree topology LAN architecture is identical to BUS topology network, except that branches with multiple
nodes are possible in this case.
Mesh Topology/ Graph Topology
In this topology, two or more nodes are connected together in an arbitrary fashion. Any two nodes in a Mesh
or Graph may or may not be connected by a link. Not all the nodes need to be connected in a graph, but if
the path can be traced between any two nodes, the graph is a connected one.
A Mesh Topology is a Mixture of BUS topology, STAR Topology, Ring and Tree Topology, with no
restriction of connection among all the nodes in a network.
The standard model for networking protocols and distributed application is the OSI model -7 network
layers.
The layers of OSI provides the levels of abstraction.
Each layer performs a different set of functions and the intent was to make each layer as independent
as possible from all the others.
Each layer uses the information from the below layer and provides a service to th layer above
Main advantages
Information hiding
Decoupling changes.
Breaks up complex problem into smaller manageable pieces
Abstraction of implementation details.
Separation of implementation and specification.
Can change implementation as long as service interface is maintained
Can use functionality
Upper layers can share lower layer functionality
clientserver computing
The clientserver model of computing is a distributed application structure that partitions tasks or workloads
between the providers of a resource or service, calledservers, and service requesters, called clients.[1] Often clients
and servers communicate over a computer network on separate hardware, but both client and server may reside in
the same system. A server host runs one or more server programs which share their resources with clients. A client
does not share any of its resources, but requests a server's content or service function. Clients therefore initiate
communication sessions with servers which await incoming requests.
Examples of computer applications that use the clientserver model are Email, network printing, and the World Wide
Web.
Packet switching
It is a digital networking communications method that groups all transmitted data into suitably sized blocks,
called packets, which are transmitted via a medium that may be shared by multiple simultaneous communication
sessions. Packet switching increases network efficiency, robustness and enables technological convergence of
many applications operating on the same network.
Packets are composed of a header and payload. Information in the header is used by networking hardware to direct
the packet to its destination where the payload is extracted and used by application software.
Starting in the late 1950s, American computer scientist Paul Baran developed the concept Distributed Adaptive
Message Block Switching with the goal to provide a fault-tolerant, efficient routing method for telecommunication
messages as part of a research program at the RAND Corporation, funded by the US Department of Defense.[1] This
concept contrasted and contradicted the theretofore established principles of pre-allocation of network bandwidth,
largely fortified by the development of telecommunications in the Bell Syste.
spoofing
In computer networking, IP address spoofing or IP spoofing is the creation of Internet Protocol (IP)
packets with a forged source IP address, with the purpose of concealing the identity of the sender or
impersonating another computing system.