Friday, October 22, 2010

Intranet Diagram: 5.3

Hello again!  Today we are going to talk about how the Intranet works and about each part of the intranet Diagram.  Basically, the Intranet consists of a private network using web technology to send secure information within an organization.  So technically, it is a Business-to-Employee Commerce type. 

The diagram starts with the client which is the company on a LAN sending information through an e-mail server, which is a router.  The router then sends it through a firewall and through the Virtual Private network (VPN).  It is then received by a client within our company and to send information back, it has to do the same thing that we did.

We, as a company, can benefit and use this because of the amazing applications that make up the Intranet.  Those applications include: Training, Personalized Internet pages, Application Integration, Online Entry of Info, Real-Time Access, and Collaboration.

What our employees would see when they go to our website would be their re-training videos, their schedules, and their payroll.

Extranet Diagram: 5.2



Hello, everyone!  Today's new subject is the Extranet Diagram which is displayed above here! Before we talk about the diagram, let me explain what extranet is.  Extranet is a network that enables 2 or more firms to use the Internet to do business through use of VPN and firewall technologies.

Displayed above in the first box (LAN A) is the name of our company, what role we are playing (client), and it shows that we have a firewall which is the gatekeeper to our technology that keeps unwanted information out of touch.  We send our requests to the server(Haynes, LAN B) through VPN (Virtual Private Network).  VPN ensures secured transmission of proprietary information.  We then wait for a response from the server seeing what they could do for us.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Critiquing Our Competitors's Website 5.1

The website that we chose to be our competitors was www.perfect-cabin-vacations.com.  It is a website that deals with renting or selling cabins to customers who want to do it for their honeymoon or for a summer or winter home.  We are going to rate the website by applying the rules of e-commerce. The rules are:

1) The web site should offer something unique.

2) The web site must be aesthetically appeasing.

3) It must be easy to use and offer.

4) It must motivate people to visit, stay, and return.

5) It must be advertised on the Web.

6) They should learn from the website.

With all of these rules in mind, anyone can make a really great website.

Now we need to talk about which kind of business-to-consumer strategy that the website uses.  Business-to-Consumer is a transactional process between a business and a customer wanting a certain product. 


There are 3 types of B2C strategies:

Brick & Monitor, Click & Mortar, and Click Only.

I believe that the website is a click only strategy because they have no physical stores and everything is online.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Entity-Relationship Diagram 4.4


The diagram displayed above is an Entity-Relationship diagram.  An entity-relationship diagram is used to display the structure of data and show relationships between the entities.  Entities are what the data itself represents.  For example, Customer, Product, and Invoice are all entities because they are all nouns.   Below each of those entities are attributes or individual pieces of information about that entity in a database.  Data types are numbers or text that describe each of those individual attributes.  All of those attributes within each entity make up a record or a collection of related attributes.  The relationships are shown between each entity by an arrow or a line describing that relationship between each entity.  It could also be from attribute to attribute.

With all of this, we can make a database table in Microsoft Excel to emphasize the diagram greatly.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Packet-Switching 4.3


 In the diagram above, it shows us how the packet-switching technology works. There are messages that are being transferred from multiple web servers and it can cause problems.  That problem is called concurrent data transmission.  In order to solve that, packet-switching technology is needed.  Messages get sent to routers which are the "mailboxes".  They then get sent to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which divides, discards duplicates, and rearranges the mission in the correct way.  The messages are then sent to the IPs (Internet Protocol) which are then sent through ip addresses.  The IPs job may be done, but the TCP has more to do.  It makes sure that they go to the right addresses, checks to make sure if they are more packets that go with the entire message, etc.