Infrastructure Technologies

As information systems become more distributed, the network becomes a very integral part of the application system.
Many business characteristics of the application actually are beginning to be rendered by the network in general, and the "transport protocols" in particular. In the real world "resources" are allocated by the prominence of the user. For example, a first-class airline passenger is always in a smaller queue or boards the aircraft before everybody else, and high net worth banking clients have personal bankers. This prioritization of users based on their profile, results in exclusive and guaranteed resource availability.

Even today, many developing nations and some remote parts of industrialized countries lack an efficient wired infrastructure technology such as telephone, DSL, and cable to deliver high-speed Internet access. Satellite Internet is an alternative to address this issue. In such a system, the content provider beams a signal to a satellite that then bounces the signal back to Earth, where it can be received by millions of subscribers. Although satellites could be employed for Internet communication, little research is being conducted in this area. This may be due to factors such as problems of latency and the cost. In those cases where the latency is a mere 10 to 100 ms in the case of DSL and cable modem, it is 239 ms for one-way and 478 ms for two-way satellite communication. This is because it takes 239 ms for the light to reach geosynchronous satellites at a speed of 186,000 miles per second. One company that is doing business in satellite Internet connection is Hughes Electronics Corporation hughes.com .

The evolution of wireless technology can be classified as follows: First-generation cell phones use analog technology, second-generation cell phones use digital technology (such as personal services communication [PCS]), and third-generation (3G) cell phones use the 1.9-GHz range, which is also the technology used for laptop computers.

Consumers can get an Internet connection through fiberoptic cable via one of the following modalities: In a distributed application, a network is a very important resource. Making it available, based on business rules, has promulgated the network into such prominence that it has become an inseparable part of designing the business application itself; hence, the architecture. This Web-initiated business requirement is met in the marketplace by new products made available by network providers. The essential functional characteristics and their relevance to business imperatives are outlined in the following lesson.
Infrastructure technologies are the foundation technologies upon which all other e-Business services and customer experiences are built.