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Siriginidi Subba Rao: Siriginidi Subba Rao is a Scientist and Head of the Information Technology at the Central Leather Research Institute, Adyar, Chennai (Madras), India.
Introduction
The phenomenal growth of the Internet is a result of a "virtuous circle" whereby Internet users spend increasing amounts of time on the Internet, which makes them more receptive to superior content, which attracts more companies to create Websites, which creates more users, which makes Internet advertising more important, which brings in "big players", and so on.
At present, Asia is experiencing this phenomenal growth in Internet usage. The total number of users is expected to increase to almost 150 million by the end of 2000. The Internet that began as a messaging and recreational tool has emerged as a powerful information medium and has evolved into the basic carrier of this new phenomenon that is e-commerce.
The Internet is the closest one can get to the world of perfect competition, where information on buyers and sellers is available. For items like software, data and information, it reduces the distribution costs to zero. These features are impacting the commercial world in dramatic fashion, resulting in new forms of business. The humble Internet service provider (ISP) that was formed to provide simple access to the Internet now allows large numbers of people to interact for both recreational and business use.
Internet service provider (ISP)
ISPs are companies that provide access to the Internet. They do this in a variety of ways. Generally, when one signs up for an account, one gets a username, password, a list of telephone numbers that one could dial to access the Internet and the appropriate software. This will include a "Web browser" (the basic software for accessing and reading content on Websites), an e-mail client (for composing and reading e-mail messages), a newsgroup reader (for reading the messages on the vast number of newsgroups - affinity groups exchanging messages and information on particular topics).
Consumers will normally be provided with dial-up access to their ISP using their standard telephone line though this is starting to change as cable organizations, and others, provide higher capacity lines using other access methods.
Commercial and larger organizations may use other connection methods which offer higher capacity (greater bandwidth) and...