Business Strategy B2B

b2b

Web Server Basics

Electronic Mail

Web Site and Internet Utility Programs

Web Server Hardware

The main job of a Web server is to receive and respond to requests from Web client computers. The three main elements of a server are the hardware, Web server software and operating system software. After a firm decides what kind of site they need for their business they must decide on what type of server they need. They need to estimate the number of visitors they might have on their site, the average number of pages the user will visit, how large the pages will be and the number of simultaneous visitors.

There are several different types of Web sites to choose from. Picking the right one will be reliant on what purpose the site needs to fulfill. Development sites are simple sites that are used to evaluate different Web sites with little initial investment. Intranets are corporate networks that house internal memos, corporate policy, handbooks, expense account worksheets, budgets, newsletters, and other corporate documents. Extranets are Intranets that allow authorized persons outside the company to access certain parts of information stored in the system. Transaction-processing sites are commerce sites that must be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These must have spare servers for handling high traffic and the proper software. Content-delivery sites are sites that deliver information such as news, histories, and summaries.

When you use your computer to access the Web, it becomes part of the client/server network. Computers that function as servers generally have more memory and larger, faster disk drives than the client computers. These computers require software to use them, like browser software and it needs to be platform neutral. There are two types of pages that can be delivered. A dynamic page is one that is interactive with the user and can respond instantly to user requests. A static page is an unchanging page that is simple and requires no

special code. Static page delivery requires less power and a server that is delivering them is likely to be faster than one dealing with dynamic pages. There are two ways to create dynamic pages: server-side scripting and dynamic page-generation technology using a special language like PHP, ASP, or JSP.

Some clients using dynamic pages also use database software as well. This allows the user to interact with the page in all kinds of ways including e-commerce and search engines. Once the request is formed, it is sent to the server, who retrieves the information needed and delivers it back to the client computer. This is called client/server communication. The basic Web model is a two-tier model with only one client and one server. A typical request message contains a request line, optional request headers, and an optional entity body. This method works well for the delivery of basic HTML pages. For dynamic pages you need a three-tire structure. This includes the database management software required to fulfill the user’s requests. This is a must for dynamic pages.

Operating systems are responsible for running programs and allocating computer resources to programs. You must have an OS to run programs. There are separate OS’s that are designed specifically to run servers. After you decide on your operating system, you can choose what server software to purchase. Apache is by far the most popular and it is open source and free to the public. Other server software options are Microsoft Internet Information Server and Sun Java System Web Server.

E-mail was one of the first Internet applications and was the main reason that people were initially attracted to the Internet. E-mail allows a user to send a message, complete with attachments of music, videos, or pictures to anyone else that has an e-mail account in mere seconds. E-mail is a mainstay in e-commerce. One major drawback to e-mail is that it can be used to transport viruses. Another annoying disadvantage is spam, or unsolicited e-mail. Spam has become more and more common, but fortunately there are solutions. One is to use a unique user name. A second is be careful where you give your e-mail address. When you sign up for newsletters or gaming sites, they will often sell your information to a third party. A great way to take care of spam is to use a filter. This will weed out e-mails that it thinks may be junk mail. Unfortunately sometimes the good ones may get weeded out as well. Many filters just examine the heading while others check IP addresses. There

are several different types of filters including black and white lists along with challenge response, which requires the sender to reply to the e-mail to gain access to their site. Another confirmation technique is CAPTCHA, which is used way too much in my opinion. Some fiIters can get even more advanced than that by inspecting the entire message. Bayesian revision is an advanced anti-spamming filter that uses statistics to determine whether the message is legitimate or not. There are several laws in place to prevent Spam that provide penalties. One is the CAN-SPAM law. It’s main provisions include misleading address header information, deceptive subject headers, clear and conspicuous notice of message nature, physical postal address, mandatory opt-out option, effectiveness of opt-out and transfer of e-mail addresses. It also does things like prevent harvesting of addresses from other sites and

generating e-mail addresses. The Internet was not designed for security, all these measures were an afterthought.

TCP/IP supports a variety of utility programs, or tools. These can be run on the server or on the client’s computer. E-mail is one of those utilities. The following are some of the other popular tools used. Finger is a program that runs on UNIX and allows the user to find information on other users in the network. It can give a list of users on the network and a log of when they logged on. Ping is a program that tests the connectivity between two computers that are connected to the Internet. It labels the number of hops a message has to take to get to and from the Web address you are reaching out to. Tracert sends a packet to another computer and tracks the time it takes. This is a great way to see how fast different connections are. Telnet allows remote login capability for users running older software to get to the Internet.

FTP is the part of TCP/IP that defined the format used to transfer files. Other utility programs include search engines, indexing programs, data analysis software, line checking utilities and remote server administration. These programs all serve a useful purpose.

ping

As discussed earlier, Web server computers have more memory, larger and faster hard disk drives, and faster processors than the typical PC. Many use multiple processors. Because of these features, servers generally cost a bit more than regular computers. Servers can take up a bit of room and are often installed in equipment racks. You can also install several servers on a single board and rack them. They are called blade servers. Benchmarking hardware and software is useful in helping to make informed decisions about the system. Hardware, software, connection speed, user capacity and the type of Web pages you are loading all affect the server’s overall performance. The number of users a server can handle is important as well. Throughput is the number of HTTP requests that a particular hardware and software combination can process in a unit of time. Response time is the amount of time it takes the server to process one request. When considering what server to implement, it is important to keep these numbers in mind. The architecture of your server setup is important as well. If you are running a very large site, you may want to build server farms which can accommodate a number of large servers in one place. Using a few large servers is called a centralized architecture, while using a bunch of smaller computers as servers is called a decentralized approach.

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