Software and Neworking Technologies Commonly Employed in...

Task 1 (a) There are many things to consider when implementing an e-commerce system for the reliable transfer of money and goods online, as each part of the chain has to be analysed to make sure that it is not the weak link that will be the downfall of the entire system. In this document, I will be outlining some of the more common forms of e-commerce hardware, software and networking technologies that are commonly employed in the world of e-commerce. Software When choosing software to implement, one must think if it fulfils a number of criteria, some of these criteria would be things such as: †¢ Easy for the buyer to use, such as a â€Å"shopping basket† style interface †¢ Secure, for both the buyer’s details and the seller’s systems†¦show more content†¦From a more technical standpoint, the browsers and servers communicate by using a protocol known as TCP/IP, and it is vital that both the computers that are trying to communicate (in this case to make a sale, or purchase) are using the same protocol, otherwise communication between the systems is not possible. An IP address is a number used to identify systems from other systems on a network, his is also applied to the Internet, the world’s largest network, in the case of e-commerce an IP address is used much in the same way that an address is used in the real word, information is sent to the address in the real world (this would be in the form of a letter) and information is sent back to the IP that sent the data. An IP address can be used to view web pages in a browser, by being typed in the address bar, however due to them being long strings of numbers that are not easy for humans to remember, it is much more practical and commonplace to use a ‘domain name’ which takes the place of an IP address as a much more memorable and marketable name to do business under. A domain name is a string of characters such as letters or numbers that can generally be marketed as the business name, it can be paired with one or many IP addresses that belong to the same person, meaning that should someone wish to run their website on multiple servers with the same domain name, this is possible. The basic architectural design of an e-commerce system The