BCA113 Internet Computing and Ethics

Internet and Its Use 45 UNIT 2 INTERNET AND ITS USE Structure: 2.0 Learning Objectives 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Internet Connectivity 2.3 FTP 2.4 HTTP 2.5 Telnet 2.6 TCP/IP 2.7 SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) 2.8 Virtual Reality 2.8.1 What is Virtual Reality? 2.8.2 Applications of Virtual Reality 2.8.3 Pros and Cons of Virtual Reality 2.9 Cookies and Sessions 2.10 Summary 2.11 Key Words/Abbreviations 2.12 Learning Activity 2.13 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) 2.14 References CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

46 Internet Computing and Ethics 2.0 Learning Objectives After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Explain various techniques to get connected with internet  Describe various internet protocols and their use  Define virtual reality and its use in various fields  Explain cookies and session and their uses in internet 2.1 Introduction Internet is a global system that can be used for sharing information, providing worldwide services and communication. Daily updates are easily and instantly available in the internet. Also, you can search for any information you are looking for; in the internet. In today ’ s world, all companies are able to operate only with the use of internet. A lot of products and services are sold and provided through internet today. Once upon a time, telephone was considered a fast mode of communication. Now, internet has enormously emerged and replaced telephone as swift mode of communication. Today the Virtual reality (VR) technology is applied to advance fields of medicine, engineering, education, design, training, and entertainment. VR is a computer interfaces which tries to mimic real world beyond the flat monitor to give an immersive 3D (Three Dimension) visual experiences. 2.2 Internet Connectivity What is the internet? The internet is the wider network that allows computer networks around the world run by companies, governments, universities and other organizations to talk to one another. The result is a mass of cables, computers, data centers, routers, servers, repeaters, satellites and wifi towers that allows digital information to travel around the world. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 47 The Internet is a global wide area network that connects computer systems across the world. It includes several high-bandwidth data lines that comprise the Internet “backbone.” These lines are connected to major Internet hubs that distribute data to other locations, such as web servers and ISPs. In order to connect to the Internet, you must have access to an Internet service provider (ISP), which acts the middleman between you and the Internet. Most ISPs offer broadband Internet access via a cable, DSL, or fiber connection. When you connect to the Internet using a public Wi- Fi signal, the Wi-Fi router is still connected to an ISP that provides Internet access. Even cellular data towers must connect to an Internet service provider to provide connected devices with access to the Internet. The Internet provides different online services. Some examples include:  Web – a collection of billions of Web Pages that you can view with a web browser  Email – the most common method of sending and receiving messages online  Social media – websites and apps that allow people to share comments, photos, and videos  Online gaming – games that allow people to play with and against each other over the Internet  Software updates – operating system and application updates can typically downloaded from the Internet What is the World Wide Web? World Wide Web (WWW) is the leading information retrieval service of the Internet (the worldwide computer network). The web is a way to view and share information over the internet. That information, be it text, music, photos or videos or whatever, is written on web pages served up by a web browser. The Web gives users access to a vast array of documents that are connected to each other by means of hypertext or hypermedia links—i.e., hyperlinks, electronic connections that link related pieces of information in order to allow a user easy access to them. Hypertext allows the user to CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

48 Internet Computing and Ethics select a word or phrase from text and and thereby access other documents that contain additional information pertaining to that word or phrase; hypermedia documents feature links to images, sounds, animations, and movies. 2.3 FTP File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard Internet protocol for transmitting files between computers on the Internet over TCP/IP connections. FTP is a client-server protocol where a client will ask for a file, and a local or remote server will provide it. The end-users machine is typically called the local host machine, which is connected via the internet to the remote host—which is the second machine running the FTP software. Anonymous FTP is a type of FTP that allows users to access files and other data without needing an ID or password. Some websites will allow visitors to use a guest ID or password- anonymous FTP allows this. Although a lot of file transfer is now handled using HTTP, FTP is still commonly used to transfer files “behind the scenes” for other applications -- e.g., hidden behind the user interfaces of banking, a service that helps build a website, such as Wix or SquareSpace, or other services. It is also used, via Web browsers, to download new applications. How FTP Works FTP is a client-server protocol that relies on two communications channels between client and server: a command channel for controlling the conversation and a data channel for transmitting file content. Clients initiate conversations with servers by requesting to download a file. Using FTP, a client can upload, download, delete, rename, move and copy files on a server. A user typically needs to log on to the FTP server, although some servers make some or all of their content available without login, known as anonymous FTP. FTP sessions work in passive or active modes. In active mode, after a client initiates a session via a command channel request, the server initiates a data connection back to the client and begins transferring data. In passive mode, the server instead uses the command channel to CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 49 send the client the information it needs to open a data channel. Because passive mode has the client initiating all connections, it works well across firewalls and Network Address Translation (NAT) gateways. Fig. 2.1: Active and Passive FTP data connection Users can work with FTP via a simple command line interface (for example, from a console or terminal window in Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X or Linux) or with a dedicated graphical user interface (GUI). Web browsers can also serve as FTP clients. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

50 Internet Computing and Ethics FTP Clients FTP clients are used to upload, download and manage files on a server. FTC clients include:  WinSCP is a Windows FTC client that supports FTP, SSH and SFTP.  WS FTP is another Windows FTC client which also supports SSH.  Transmit is an FTP client for Mac, supporting FTP, SSH and FTP. Advantages of FTP  Speed: One of the biggest advantages of FTP is speed. The FTP is one of the fastest way to transfer the files from one computer to another computer.  Efficient: It is more efficient as we do not need to complete all the operations to get the entire file.  Security: To access the FTP server, we need to login with the username and password. Therefore, we can say that FTP is more secure.  Back & forth movement: FTP allows us to transfer the files back and forth. Suppose you are a manager of the company, you send some information to all the employees, and they all send information back on the same server. Disadvantages of FTP  The standard requirement of the industry is that all the FTP transmissions should be encrypted. However, not all the FTP providers are equal and not all the providers offer encryption. So, we will have to look out for the FTP providers that provides encryption.  FTP serves two operations, i.e., to send and receive large files on a network. However, the size limit of the file is 2GB that can be sent. It also doesn’t allow you to run simultaneous transfers to multiple receivers.  Passwords and file contents are sent in clear text that allows unwanted eavesdropping. So, it is quite possible that attackers can carry out the brute force attack by trying to guess the FTP password.  It is not compatible with every system. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 51 2.4 HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. This is the foundation for data communication for the World Wide Web (i.e. internet) since 1990. HTTP is a generic and stateless protocol which can be used for other purposes as well using extensions of its request methods, error codes, and headers. Basically, HTTP is a TCP/IP based communication protocol, that is used to deliver data (HTML files, image files, query results, etc.) on the World Wide Web. The default port is TCP 80, but other ports can be used as well. It provides a standardized way for computers to communicate with each other. HTTP specification specifies how clients’ request data will be constructed and sent to the server, and how the servers respond to these requests. Basic Features There are three basic features that make HTTP a simple but powerful protocol:  HTTP is connectionless: The HTTP client, i.e., a browser initiates an HTTP request and after a request is made, the client waits for the response. The server processes the request and sends a response back after which client disconnect the connection. So client and server knows about each other during current request and response only. Further requests are made on new connection like client and server are new to each other.  HTTP is media independent: It means, any type of data can be sent by HTTP as long as both the client and the server know how to handle the data content. It is required for the client as well as the server to specify the content type using appropriate MIME-type.  HTTP is stateless: As mentioned above, HTTP is connectionless and it is a direct result of HTTP being a stateless protocol. The server and client are aware of each other only during a current request. Afterwards, both of them forget about each other. Due to this nature of the protocol, neither the client nor the browser can retain information between different requests across the web pages. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

52 Internet Computing and Ethics HTTP/1.0 uses a new connection for each request/response exchange, whereas HTTP/1.1 connection may be used for one or more request/response exchanges. Basic Architecture The following diagram shows a very basic architecture of a web application and depicts where HTTP sits: Fig. 2.2: Web application The HTTP protocol is a request/response protocol based on the client/server based architecture where web browsers, robots and search engines, etc. act like HTTP clients, and the Web server acts as a server. Client The HTTP client sends a request to the server in the form of a request method, URI, and protocol version, followed by a MIME-like message containing request modifiers, client information, and possible body content over a TCP/IP connection. Server The HTTP server responds with a status line, including the message’s protocol version and a success or error code, followed by a MIME-like message containing server information, entity meta information, and possible entity-body content. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 53 2.5 Telnet What is Telnet? Telnet, developed in 1969, is a protocol that provides a command line interface for communication with a remote device or server, sometimes employed for remote management but also for initial device setup like network hardware. Telnet stands for Teletype Network, but it can also be used as a verb; ‘to telnet’ is to establish a connection using the Telnet protocol. Is Telnet Secure? Because it was developed before the mainstream adaptation of the internet, Telnet on its own does not employ any form of encryption, making it outdated in terms of modern security. It has largely been overlapped by Secure Shell (SSH) protocol, at least on the public internet, but for instances where Telnet is still in use, there are a few methods for securing your communications. How does Telnet Work? Telnet provides users with a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication system utilizing a virtual terminal connection over 8 byte. User data is interspersed in-band with telnet control information over the transmission control protocol (TCP). Often, Telnet was used on a terminal to execute functions remotely. The user connects to the server by using the Telnet protocol, which means entering Telnet into a command prompt by following this syntax: telnet hostname port. The user then executes commands on the server by using specific Telnet commands into the Telnet prompt. To end a session and log off, the user ends a Telnet command with Telnet. What are Common Uses for Telnet? Telnet can be used to test or troubleshoot remote web or mail servers, as well as for remote access to MUDs (multi-user dungeon games) and trusted internal networks. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

54 Internet Computing and Ethics 2.6 TCP/IP IP Address IP address is an address having information about how to reach a specific host, especially outside the LAN. An IP address is a 32 bit unique address having an address space of 232. Generally, there are two notations in which IP address is written, dotted decimal notation and hexadecimal notation. Dotted Decimal Notation Fig. 2.3: Dotted Decimal Notation Hexadecimal Notation 00011101 10010101 11101010 95 1D EA 01110101 75 0×75951DEA Fig. 2.4: Hexadecimal Notation Classful Addressing The 32 bit IP address is divided into five sub-classes. These are:  Class A  Class B  Class C  Class D  Class E CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 55 Each of these classes has a valid range of IP addresses. Classes D and E are reserved for multicast and experimental purposes respectively. The order of bits in the first octet determine the classes of IP address. IPv4 address is divided into two parts:  Network ID  Host ID Fig. 2.5: Classful Addressing TCP/IP Protocol The fundamental purpose of TCP/IP is to provide computers with a method of transmitting data from one computer to another over a network. In actuality, TCP/IP is a suite of protocols and applications that perform discrete functions The purpose of a firewall is to control the passage of TCP/IP packets between hosts and networks. Corresponding to specific layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research branch of the U.S. Department of Defense, created the TCP/IP model in the 1970s for use in ARPANET, a wide area network that preceded the internet. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

56 Internet Computing and Ethics TCP/IP Model Layers Layer 4 Application Transport Layer 3 Internet Layer 2 Link Layer 1 Fig. 2.6: TCP/IP Model TCP/IP functionality is divided into four layers, each of which include specific protocols.  The application layer provides applications with standardized data exchange. Its protocols include the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).  The transport layer is responsible for maintaining end-to-end communications across the network. TCP handles communications between hosts and provides flow control, multiplexing and reliability. The transport protocols include TCP and User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which is sometimes used instead of TCP for special purposes.  The network layer, also called the internet layer, deals with packets and connects independent networks to transport the packets across network boundaries. The network layer protocols are the IP and the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP), which is used for error reporting.  The physical layer consists of protocols that operate only on a link -- the network component that interconnects nodes or hosts in the network. The protocols in this layer include Ethernet for local area networks (LANs) and the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 57 Merits of TCP/IP Model  It operated independently.  It is scalable.  Client/server architecture.  Supports a number of routing protocols.  Can be used to establish a connection between two computers. Demerits of TCP/IP  In this, the transport layer does not guarantee delivery of packets.  The model cannot be used in any other application.  Replacing protocol is not easy.  It has not clearly separated its services, interfaces and protocols. Ports and TCP/IP  To enable communications within the TCP/IP stack and to facilitate connections between two hosts, most well-known services are run on universally known ports.  Firewalls base some or all of their access control decisions on the port information contained within packet headers.  Without universally known ports, providers of services would need to inform each of their users of the proper ports to use. For example, port 80 is the well-known port for  HTTP, and almost all web servers on the Internet are configured to service HTTP requests on port 80.  Connecting on any other port would result in an error unless the web server had been configured to listen on that non-default port and respond to the requests. If an administrator chose to have the web server use port 81, they would have to inform all their users to specifically connect on port 81. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

58 Internet Computing and Ethics Outgoing HTTP request TCP packet headers TCP source port: 1085. TCP destination port: 80 Internet user wishes Returning HTTP answer TCP packet headers Web user listening on to open a web page TCP source port: 80. TCP destination port: 1085 port 80 for HTTP requests Fig. 2.7: TCP port numbers in an HTTP request 2.7 SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) Email is emerging as one of the most valuable services on the internet today. Most of the internet systems use SMTP as a method to transfer mail from one user to another. SMTP is a push protocol and is used to send the mail whereas POP (post office protocol) or IMAP (internet message access protocol) are used to retrieve those mails at the receiver’s side. SMTP Fundamentals SMTP is an application layer protocol. The client who wants to send the mail opens a TCP connection to the SMTP server and then sends the mail across the connection. The SMTP server is always on listening mode. As soon as it listens for a TCP connection from any client, the SMTP process initiates a connection on that port (25). After successfully establishing the TCP connection the client process sends the mail instantly. The SMTP model is of two types: 1. End-to- end method 2. Store-and- forward method The end to end model is used to communicate between different organizations whereas the store and forward method are used within an organization. A SMTP client who wants to send the mail will contact the destination’s host SMTP directly in order to send the mail to the destination. The SMTP server will keep the mail to itself until it is successfully copied to the receiver’s SMTP. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 59 The client SMTP is the one which initiates the session let us call it as the client- SMTP and the server SMTP is the one which responds to the session request and let us call it as receiver- SMTP. The client- SMTP will start the session and the receiver-SMTP will respond to the request. Model of SMTP System In the SMTP model user deals with the user agent (UA) for example Microsoft Outlook, Netscape, Mozilla, etc. In order to exchange the mail using TCP, MTA is used. The users sending the mail do not have to deal with the MTA, it is the responsibility of the system admin to set up the local MTA. The MTA maintains a small queue of mails so that it can schedule repeat delivery of mail in case the receiver is not available. The MTA delivers the mail to the mailboxes and the information can later be downloaded by the user agents. User at a terminal User Sent mail’s Client Sender Agent queue MTA Message Transfer Agent SMTP commands, TCP connections replies and mail TCP port 25 User at a terminal User User MTA Receiver Agent Mailboxes Message Transfer Agent Server Fig. 2.8: Model of SMTP System Both the SMTP-client and MSTP-server should have 2 components: 1. User agent (UA) 2. Local MTA Communication between Sender and the Receiver The senders, user agent prepare the message and send it to the MTA. The MTA functioning is to transfer the mail across the network to the receivers MTA. To send mail, a system must have the client MTA, and to receive mail, a system must have a server MTA. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

60 Internet Computing and Ethics SENDING EMAIL Mail is sent by a series of request and response messages between the client and a server. The message which is sent across consists of a header and the body. A null line is used to terminate the mail header. Everything which is after the null line is considered as the body of the message which is a sequence of ASCII characters. The message body contains the actual information read by the receipt. RECEIVING EMAIL The user agent at the server side checks the mailboxes at a particular time of intervals. If any information is received it informs the user about the mail. When the user tries to read the mail it displays a list of mails with a short description of each mail in the mailbox. By selecting any of the mail user can view its contents on the terminal. 2.8 Virtual Reality 2.8.1 What is Virtual Reality? Virtual reality (VR) means experiencing things through our computers that don’t really exist. From that simple definition, the idea doesn’t sound especially new. When you look at an amazing Canaletto painting, for example, you’re experiencing the sites and sounds of Italy as it was about 250 years ago—so that’s a kind of virtual reality. In the same way, if you listen to ambient instrumental or classical music with your eyes closed, and start dreaming about things, isn’t that an example of virtual reality—an experience of a world that doesn’t really exist? What about losing yourself in a book or a movie? Surely that’s a kind of virtual reality? If we’re going to understand why books, movies, paintings, and pieces of music aren’t the same thing as virtual reality, we need to define VR fairly clearly. A believable, interactive 3D computer-created world that you can explore so you feel you really are there, both mentally and physically. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 61 Putting it another way, virtual reality is essentially: 1. Believable: You really need to feel like you’re in your virtual world (on Mars, or wherever) and to keep believing that, or the illusion of virtual reality will disappear. 2. Interactive: As you move around, the VR world needs to move with you. You can watch a 3D movie and be transported up to the Moon or down to the seabed—but it’s not interactive in any sense. 3. Computer-generated: Why is that important? Because only powerful machines, with realistic 3D computer graphics, are fast enough to make believable, interactive, alternative worlds that change in real-time as we move around them. 4. Explorable: A VR world needs to be big and detailed enough for you to explore. However, realistic a painting is, it shows only one scene, from one perspective. A book can describe a vast and complex “virtual world,” but you can only really explore it in a linear way, exactly as the author describes it. 5. Immersive: To be both believable and interactive, VR needs to engage both your body and your mind. Paintings by war artists can give us glimpses of conflict, but they can never fully convey the sight, sound, smell, taste, and feel of battle. You can play a flight simulator game on your home PC and be lost in a very realistic, interactive experience for hours (the landscape will constantly change as your plane flies through it), but it’s not like using a real flight simulator (where you sit in a hydraulically operated mockup of a real cockpit and feel actual forces as it tips and tilts), and even less like flying a plane. 2.8.2 Applications of Virtual Reality Education Difficult and dangerous jobs are hard to train for. How can you safely practice taking a trip to space, landing a jumbo jet, making a parachute jump, or carrying out brain surgery? All these things are obvious candidates for virtual reality applications. As we’ve seen already, flight cockpit simulators were among the earliest VR applications; they can trace their history back to mechanical simulators developed by Edwin Link in the 1920s. Just like pilots, surgeons are now routinely trained using VR. In a 2008 study of 735 surgical trainees from 28 different countries, CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

62 Internet Computing and Ethics 68 per cent said the opportunity to train with VR was “good” or “excellent” for them and only 2 per cent rated it useless or unsuitable. Scientific Visualization Anything that happens at the atomic or molecular scale is effectively invisible unless you’re prepared to sit with your eyes glued to an electron microscope. But suppose you want to design new materials or drugs and you want to experiment with the molecular equivalent of LEGO. That’s another obvious application for virtual reality. Instead of wrestling with numbers, equations, or two-dimensional drawings of molecular structures, you can snap complex molecules together right before your eyes. This kind of work began in the 1960s at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Frederick Brooks launched GROPE, a project to develop a VR system for exploring the interactions between protein molecules and drugs. Medicine Apart from its use in things like surgical training and drug design, virtual reality also makes possible telemedicine (monitoring, examining, or operating on patients remotely). A logical extension of this has a surgeon in one location hooked up to a virtual reality control panel and a robot in another location (maybe an entire continent away) wielding the knife. Although it’s still early days, VR has already been tested as a treatment for various kinds of psychiatric disorder (such as schizophrenia, agoraphobia, and phantom-limb pain), and in rehabilitation for stroke patients and those suffering degenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Industrial Design and Architecture Architects used to build models out of card and paper; now they’re much more likely to build virtual reality computer models you can walk through and explore. By the same token, it’s generally much cheaper to design cars, airplanes, and other complex, expensive vehicles on a computer screen than to model them in wood, plastic, or other real-world materials. This is an area where virtual reality overlaps with computer modelling: instead of simply making an immersive 3D visual model for people to inspect and explore, you’re creating a mathematical model that can be tested for its aerodynamic, safety, or other qualities. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 63 Games and entertainment From flight simulators to race-car games, VR has long hovered on the edges of the gaming world—never quite good enough to revolutionize the experience of gamers, largely due to computers being too slow, displays lacking full 3D, and the lack of decent HMDs and data gloves. All that may be about to change with the development of affordable new peripherals like the Oculus Rift. 2.8.3 Pros and Cons of Virtual Reality Like any technology, virtual reality has both good and bad points. How many of us would rather have a complex brain operation carried out by a surgeon trained in VR, compared to someone who has merely read books or watched over the shoulders of their peers? How many of us would rather practice our driving on a car simulator before we set foot on the road? Or sit back and relax in a Jumbo Jet, confident in the knowledge that our pilot practiced landing at this very airport, dozens of times, in a VR simulator before she ever set foot in a real cockpit? Critics always raise the risk that people may be seduced by alternative realities to the point of neglecting their real-world lives—but that criticism has been levelled at everything from radio and TV to computer games and the Internet. And, at some point, it becomes a philosophical and ethical question: What is real anyway? And who is to say which is the better way to pass your time? Like many technologies, VR takes little or nothing away from the real world: you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. The promise of VR has loomed large over the world of computing for at least the last quarter century—but remains largely unfulfilled. While science, architecture, medicine, and the military all rely on VR technology in different ways, mainstream adoption remains virtually nonexistent; we’re not routinely using VR the way we use computers, Smartphone’s, or the Internet. 2.9 Cookies and Sessions Cookies and Sessions are used to store information. Cookies are only stored on the client- side machine, while sessions get stored on the client as well as a server. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

64 Internet Computing and Ethics What is a “Cookie”? A cookie is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by their browser. Common uses for cookies are authentication, storing of site preferences, shopping cart items, and server session identification. Each time the users’ web browser interacts with a web server it will pass the cookie information to the web server. Only the cookies stored by the browser that relate to the domain in the requested URL will be sent to the server. This means that cookies that relate to www.example.com will not be sent to www.exampledomain.com. Cookies are text files stored on the client computer and they are kept of use tracking purpose. Server script sends a set of cookies to the browser. For example name, age, or identification number etc. The browser stores this information on a local machine for future use. When next time browser sends any request to web server then it sends those cookies information to the server and server uses that information to identify the user. In essence, a cookie is a great way of linking one page to the next for a user’s interaction with a website or web application. What is a “Session”? A session can be defined as a server-side storage of information that is desired to persist throughout the user’s interaction with the website or web application. Instead of storing large and constantly changing information via cookies in the user’s browser, only a unique identifier is stored on the client side (called a “session id”). This session id is passed to the web server every time the browser makes an HTTP request (i.e., a page link or AJAX request). The web application pairs this session id with its internal database and retrieves the stored variables for use by the requested page. A session creates a file in a temporary directory on the server where registered session variables and their values are stored. This data will be available to all pages on the site during that visit. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 65 A session ends when the user closes the browser or after leaving the site, the server will terminate the session after a predetermined period of time, commonly 30 minutes duration. 2.10 Summary Internet: Because of the world on going forward evolution, the Development of Technology is getting modern in order to serve human needs. Previously scientist have invented the way of transportation, which is one of human needs such as Motorcycles, cars, airplanes. But at the present time, with the modern technology, that have discovered a new way of communication called ‘Internet’. Protocols: A protocol is a set of rules that governs the communications between computers on a network. In order for two computers to talk to each other, they must be speaking the same language. Many different types of network protocols and standards are required to ensure that your computer (no matter which operating system, network card, or application you are using) can communicate with another computer located on the next desk or half-way around the world. The OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) Reference Model defines seven layers of networking protocols. Several protocols overlap the session, presentation, and application layers of networks. These protocols listed below are a few of the more well-known:  DNS - Domain Name System – Translates network address (such as IP addresses) into terms understood by humans (such as Domain Names) and vice-versa  DHCP - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol – Can automatically assign Internet addresses to computers and users  FTP - File Transfer Protocol – A protocol that is used to transfer and manipulate files on the Internet  HTTP - HyperText Transfer Protocol – An Internet-based protocol for sending and receiving webpages  IMAP - Internet Message Access Protocol – A protocol for e-mail messages on the Internet CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

66 Internet Computing and Ethics  IRC - Internet Relay Chat – A protocol used for Internet chat and other communications  POP3 - Post Office protocol Version 3 – A protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve messages from remote servers  SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol – A protocol for e-mail messages on the Internet Virtual Reality: Virtual reality comes, naturally, from the definitions for both ‘virtual’ and ‘reality’. The definition of ‘virtual’ is near and reality is what we experience as human beings. So the term ‘virtual reality’ basically means ‘near-reality’. This could, of course, mean anything but it usually refers to a specific type of reality emulation. Virtual reality entails presenting our senses with a computer generated virtual environment that we can explore in some fashion. Cookies: The cookies we use on our website are either ‘Essential’ or ‘Performance’ Cookies:  Essential cookies enable you to move around the website and access its feature, such as accessing secure areas of a website or displaying personalised content.  Performance cookies allow us to count the number of visitors to our website and to see how visitors move around the website when they are using it. All counting and tracking is anonymous and movements and activity are not traced back to an individual user. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. Session: A session can be defined as server-side storage of information that is desired to persist throughout the user’s interaction with the website or web application. Instead of storing large and constantly changing information via cookies in the user’s browser, only a unique identifier is stored on the client side (called a “session id”). This session id is passed to the web server every time the browser makes an HTTP request (i.e., a page link or AJAX request). The web application pairs this session id with its internal database and retrieves the stored variables for use by the requested page. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Internet and Its Use 67 2.11 Key Words/Abbreviations  Software: Software is a set of instructions, data or programs used to operate computers and execute specific tasks.  Client-server protocol: A communications protocol that provides a structure for requests between client and server in a network. For example, the Web browser in the user’s computer (the client) employs the HTTP protocol to request information from a website on a server. See HTTP, TCP/IP and OSI. 2.12 Learning Activity 1. What is virtual reality? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Explain Cookies. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.13 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) A. Descriptive Types Questions 1. What is Internet and Use of it? 2. Explain FTP & TCP/IP protocol? 3. Explain HTTP protocol? 4. Explain Telnet protocol? 5. Explain SMTP protocol? 6. What is Virtual reality? Explain application of VR. 7. What is Cookies and Sessions? 8. Elucidate the impact of virtual reality in real life world. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

68 Internet Computing and Ethics B. Multiple Choice/Objective Type Questions 1. _________ is a collection of billions of Webpages that you can view with a web browser. (a) Email (b) Internet (c) Browser (d) Web 2. An IP address is a __________ bit unique address having an address space of 232. (a) 16 (b) 32 (c) 36 (d) 18 3. ________ is an application layer protocol (a) SMTP (b) TCP/IP (c) FTP (d) HTTP 4. A __________ is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by their browser. (a) Virtual reality (b) http (c) Cookie (d) Session 5. A __________ ends when the user closes the browser or after leaving the site (a) Cookie (b) Session (c) Web page (d) Email Answers 1. (d), 2. (b), 3. (a), 4. (c), 5. (b) 2.14 References 1. https://whatistheurl.com/internet-and-its-uses/ 2. https://searchapparchitecture.techtarget.com/definition/software 3. “The Internet Instant Reference (Sybex Instant Reference Series)” by Paul Hoffman. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 69 UNIT 3 CLOUD COMPUTING Structure: 3.0 Learning Objectives 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Cloud Computing 3.3 Characteristics of Cloud Computing 3.4 Service Models 3.4.1 SaaS – Software as a Service 3.4.2 IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service 3.4.3 PaaS – Platform as a Service 3.5 Deployment Models (Types of Cloud) 3.6 Applications and Challenges 3.7 Introduction to Big Data 3.8 Characteristics 3.9 Sources of Big Data 3.10 Types of Big Data 3.11 Big Data Challenges 3.12 Approach – Big Data Analytic Applications 3.13 Summary 3.14 Key Words/Abbreviations CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

70 Internet Computing and Ethics 3.15 Learning Activity 3.16 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) 3.17 References 3.0 Learning Objectives After studying this unit, you will be able to:  Describe cloud computing, the services they are providing and applications  Explain deployment models and challenges faced for cloud computing  Define Big data and their characteristics and types  List the Challenges for Big Data 3.1 Introduction Cloud computing consists of three distinct types of computing services delivered remotely to clients via the internet. Clients typically pay a monthly or annual service fee to providers, to gain access to systems that deliver software as a service, platforms as a service and infrastructure as a service to subscribers. Big Data is also data but with a huge size. Big Data is a term used to describe a collection of data that is huge in size and yet growing exponentially with time. In short such data is so large and complex that none of the traditional data management tools are able to store it or process it efficiently. 3.2 Cloud Computing A Cloud = the Internet The internet = networks of networks (MAN, LAN, WAN) A distributed network using virtualized resources and accessed by common internet protocols and networking standards. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 71 It is a general term for the delivery of hosted services over the Internet. What is Cloud Computing? A model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. Servers, storage, networks, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. – NIST Common Definitions The most commonly accepted definition in use today was articulated by national institute of standards and technology (2009). Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storages, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. A large pool of easily usable and accessible virtualized resources (such as hardware, development platforms and/or services). These resources can be dynamically reconfigured to adjust to a variable load (scale), allowing also for an optimum resource utilization. This pool of resources is typically exploited by the infrastructure providers by means of customized SLAs (Service-level agreement). A service-level agreement is a part of a service contract where the level of service is formally defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service) or performance. What is Cloud Computing? Simply put, cloud computing provides a variety of computing resources, from servers and storage to enterprise applications such as email, security, backup/DR, voice, all delivered over the Internet. The Cloud delivers a hosting environment that is immediate, flexible, scalable, secure, and available – while saving corporations money, time and resources. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

72 Internet Computing and Ethics Fig. 3.1: Solution for Business How Cloud Computing Works? Fig. 3.2: Works of Cloud Computing Cloud computing is providing on-demand services of computer power, databases, storage, applications and other IT relevance through a cloud service, platform via the Internet with pay-as- you-go pricing. Cloud computing is now understood as commonly used to describe the delivery of software, infrastructure and storage services over the internet. The use of the word “Cloud” makes reference to the two core concepts 1. Virtualization: Cloud computing virtualizes systems by pooling and sharing resources (infrastructure, platform, software). Three ways to cloud compute (a) Services are provisioned as needed. (b) Costs are assessed on a metered basis. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 73 (c) Resources are scalable (suitably efficient and practical when applied to large situations) with agility (capability of rapidly and efficiently adapting to changes) 2. Details of the physical systems on which software runs are abstracted (separated) from the user (a) Applications run on physical systems – not specified (b) Data is stored in unknown location (c) Access by user is ubiquitous (Omnipresent) Free Cloud Service providers available in Market are: DO YOU USE THE CLOUD? Fig. 3.3: Free Cloud Services 3.3 Characteristics of Cloud Computing  NIST specifies five essential cloud characteristics: (a) On-demand self-service (b) Broad network access CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

74 Internet Computing and Ethics (c) Resource pooling (d) Rapid elasticity (e) Measured service  On demand self-service (a) Computer resources can be availed for any type of workload required by the end- users on demand, thereby eliminating the traditional needs of IT administrators to provision and managing of computer resources. (b) Consumers can unilaterally provision computing capabilities automatically (c) Consumers use a service catalogue via a web-based user interface to request for a service (d) Consumers can either use “ready-to-use” services or customize some service parameters  Broad Network Access (a) Computing capabilities are available over the network (b) Computing capabilities are accessed from client devices such as: (i) Mobile phone (ii) Tablet (iii) Laptop (iv) Workstation  Resource Pooling (a) Provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model. (b) Resources are dynamically assigned, released, and reassigned according to consumer demand. (c) Enables high resource utilization and flexible provisioning. (d) Consumers may not have control or knowledge of the exact location of the provided resources. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 75  Rapid Elasticity (a) Computing needs in general may increase or decrease in companies. A need for massive investments in local infrastructure can be avoided which may not remain active.  Measured Service (a) A metering system continuously monitors resource consumption and generates usage reports. It helps to control and optimize resource use. It helps to generate billing and chargeback reports. Key Characteristics of Cloud Computing 1. Off-premise: the service is hosted and delivered from a location that belongs to a service provider. 2. Elasticity: the inherent scalability of the service provider. The resources can be rapidly provisioned, scaled both up and down very rapidly as they are required. 3. Flexible billing (Pay as you go): fees can be levied on a subscription basis or can be tied to actual consumption of resources. 4. Universal/ubiquitous access (Access anywhere, anytime): pooled resources are available to anyone authorized to utilize them. 5. On-demand self-service: individuals can obtain computing capabilities such as server time or network storage on their own. 6. Location independent RESOURCES POOLING: the user does not know where the computing resources are located. Benefits of Cloud Computing Following are Benefits of Cloud 1. Cost Savings: Cost saving is the biggest benefit of cloud computing. It helps you to save substantial capital cost as it does not need any physical hardware investments. Also, you do not need trained personnel to maintain the hardware. The buying and managing of CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

76 Internet Computing and Ethics equipment is done by the cloud service provider. It is less expensive compared to buying software and hardware. 2. Strategic Edge: Cloud computing offers a competitive edge over your competitors. It helps you to access the latest and applications any time without spending your time and money on installations. 3. High Speed: Cloud computing allows you to deploy your service quickly in fewer clicks. This faster deployment allows you to get the resources required for your system within fewer minutes. 4. Back-up and restore data: Once the data is stored in a Cloud, it is easier to get the back-up and recovery of that, which is otherwise very time taking process on-premise. 5. Automatic Software Integration: In the cloud, software integration is something that occurs automatically. Therefore, you don’t need to take additional efforts to customize and integrate your applications as per your preferences. It is compatible with most computers and operating systems. 6. Reliability: Reliability is one of the biggest pluses of cloud computing. You can always get instantly updated about the changes. 7. Mobility: Employees who are working on the premises or at the remote locations can easily access all the cloud services. All they need is an Internet connectivity. 8. Unlimited Storage Capacity: The device does not need as large of an internal storage system. The cloud offers almost limitless storage capacity. At any time you can quickly expand your storage capacity with very nominal monthly fees. 9. Collaboration: The cloud computing platform helps employees who are located in different geographies to collaborate in a highly convenient and secure manner. 11. Quick Deployment: Last but not least, cloud computing gives you the advantage of rapid deployment. So, when you decide to use the cloud, your entire system can be fully functional in very few minutes. Although, the amount of time taken depends on what kind of technologies are used in your business. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 77 12. Disaster recovery: Data loss is a major concern for all organizations, along with data security. Storing your data in the cloud guarantees that data is always available, even if your equipment like laptops or PCs, is damaged. Cloud-based services provide quick data recovery for all kinds of emergency scenarios – from natural disasters to power outages. Disadvantages of Cloud Computing 1. Performance Can Vary: When you are working in a cloud environment, your application is running on the server which simultaneously provides resources to other businesses. Any greedy behaviour or DDOS attack on your tenant could affect the performance of your shared resource. 2. Technical Issues: Cloud technology is always prone to an outage and other technical issues. Even, the best cloud service provider companies may face this type of trouble despite maintaining high standards of maintenance. 3. Security Threat in the Cloud: Another drawback while working with cloud computing services is security risk. Before adopting cloud technology, you should be well aware of the fact that you will be sharing all your company’s sensitive information to a third-party cloud computing service provider. Hackers might access this information. 4. Downtime: Downtime should also be considered while working with cloud computing. That’s because your cloud provider may face power loss, low internet connectivity, service maintenance, etc. 5. Internet Connectivity: Good Internet connectivity is a must in cloud computing. You can’t access cloud without an internet connection. Moreover, you don’t have any other way to gather data from the cloud. 6. Lower Bandwidth: Many cloud storage service providers limit bandwidth usage of their users. So, in case if your organization surpasses the given allowance, the additional charges could be significantly costly. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

78 Internet Computing and Ethics 7. Lacks of Support: Cloud Computing companies fail to provide proper support to the customers. Moreover, they want their user to depend on FAQs or online help, which can be a tedious job for non-technical persons. 3.4 Service Models  SaaS – Software as a Service  IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service  PaaS – Platform as a Service Monitoring Collaboration Finance Content Communication Identity Runtime Queue Database Object Storage Compute Block Storage Network Fig. 3.4: Service Models CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 79 Fig. 3.5: Types of Cloud Computers 3.4.1 SaaS – Software as a Service Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and made available to customers over a network, typically the Internet.  Software Services (SaaS) Model allows to provide software application as a service (SaaS) to the end-users.  SaaS can be defined as a software that is deployed on a host service and is accessible via Internet which is highly scalable and offered as services  In this model, a complete application is offered to the cloud user as a service on demand. A single instance of the service runs on the cloud and multiple end-users are serviced and benefited. The advantage is on the customer’s side as there is no need for upfront CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

80 Internet Computing and Ethics investment in servers or software licences for the same. While for the provider, the costs are lowered. One single application is hosted and maintained for several end-users  SaaS refers to a software that is deplored on a hosted service and is accessible via Internet for several applications such as: (a) Billing and Invoicing System (b) Helpdesk Applications (c) Customer Relationship Management (CRM Applications) (d) Human Resource (HR) Solutions. Fig. 3.6: SaaS 3.4.2 IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service  Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a provision model in which an organization outsources the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components.  The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible for housing, running and maintaining it. The client typically pays on a per-use  IaaS provides access to fundamental resources such as: (a) Physical machines (b) Virtual machines (c) Virtual storage, etc. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 81 Apart from these resources, the IaaS also offers several resources such as storage networks, etc. via server virtualization. In this pay-per-use model, services like storage, database management and compute capabilities are offered on demand, e.g., Amazon Web Services, PODD 60 for Grids tier. 1. Virtual machine disk storage 2. Virtual local area networks (VLANs) 3. Load balancers 4. IP addresses 5. Software bundles Fig. 3.7: IaaS 3.4.3. PaaS – Platform as a Service  Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a way to rent hardware, operating systems, storage and network capacity over the Internet. The service delivery model allows the customer to rent virtualized servers and associated services for running existing applications or developing and testing new ones.  Platform Services (PaaS) model allows to provide platform application as a service to the end-users. PaaS means platform as a service. A PaaS system goes above the ‘software as a service’ set-up. A PaaS provider gives subscribers access to the components that they require to develop and operate applications over the Internet. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

82 Internet Computing and Ethics  In the PaaS model, cloud providers host development tools on their infrastructures. Users access these tools over the internet using APIs, web portals or gateway software. PaaS is used for general software development and many PaaS provides will host the software after it is developed common.PaaS providers include Salesforce.com, AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Google App Engine. Fig. 3.8: PaaS Comparison of Saas, Paas and Iaas SaaS PaaS IaaS G-MAIL, GOOGLE+, etc. GOOGLE APP ENGINE GOOGLE COMPUTE (One can use e-mail services ENGINE and extend e-mail (Google+ (One can develop applications based applications to form new and let them execute on top of (One can develop programs to applications). Google app engine which takes be run on highly performing care of the execution). Google’s computing More popular among the infrastructure). consumers are the ones who bother about using the Most popular among developers More popular among users into application such as e-mail, as they can put all their research and high computing networking, etc. concentration on developing their areas. apps and leave the vast of management and execution to the service provider. 3.5 Deployment Models (Types of Cloud) In general, there are four types of clouds found from which any one can be selected and subscribed depending on one’s needs. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 83 In general, it may be noted that the home user or a small business owner will use ‘public cloud services’. The types of clouds are: 1. Public Cloud, as already stated above, can be used by any subscriber who has an internet connection and access to the cloud space, services provided by third party vendors, multitenant or dedicated to you as a single company. (Multitenant means that your company shares the solution with other organizations. The data is kept separate and secure.) 2. Public Cloud allows systems and services to be accessible to the general public. 3. In the public cloud model, a third-party provider delivers the cloud service over the internet. Public cloud services are sold on demand, typically by the minute or hour. Customer only pay for the CPU cycles, storage or band width they consume. Leading public cloud providers include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, IBM Soft Layer and Google Compute Engine. 4. Private Cloud: This is generally established by a specific group or company which has a limited access and available only for that group/company. This is ideal for home users and small business owners. 5. Private Cloud allows systems and services accessible within an organization. 6. Private cloud services are delivered from a business data center to internal users. The model offers versatility and convenience while preserving the management control and security common to local data centers. Users who use internally may or may not be billed for services which depends on the agreement terms with the cloud provides. 7. Community Cloud: As the name indicates, it is for a community, where cloud is shared among two or more organizations who are similar in nature and operate for more or less identical cloud requirements. 8. Community Cloud allows systems and services accountable by group of organizations 9. Hybrid Cloud: Hybrid Cloud is a mixture of public and private clouds. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

84 Internet Computing and Ethics 10. Hybrid Cloud is a combination of public cloud services and on-premises private cloud, with orchestration and automation between the two. Companies can run mission-control work loadings or sensitive applications on the private cloud while using the public cloud for bursting work loadings that must scale on demand. The goal of hybrid cloud is to create a unified cloud, automated, scalable environment that takes advantage of all that of a public cloud infrastructure can provide, while still maintaining control over mission- critical data. Hybrid cloud can be any of combinations: 1. Private + Community 2. Public + Community 3. Public + Private or A combination of at least two or three clouds (1) (2) Private Cloud Public Cloud  Services owned and operated on-site by you  Cloud services solution may be shared with other organisations and your company with data security provided by the cloud vendors.  Data kept behind your firewall  Cloud services provider controls data security  You have all control over security  Benefits of sales and cost savings  Large amounts of space available for expansion (3) (4) Hybrid Cloud Community Cloud  Services for a single organization developed over  Shared public or private cloud by more than one organisation  Combined use of public and private clouds by your  Shared by an industry group, government agency or other company. E.g., CRM data stored in a public cloud associations accounts data stored in private cloud  Allows sharing of similar in infrastructure set-up  Separate solutions connect with each other  Cloud service provider secures and partitions data  Cost-effective and unilaterally secured Fig. 3.9: Hybrid Cloud CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 85 Understanding of Different Types of Clouds and their Comparison 1. Firms which use the cloud have to choose to deploy the applications using any of the various types of clouds which suits them either public, private or hybrid type. 2. Cloud integrators can play a vital part in determining the right cloud path for each organization. 3.6 Applications and Challenges Cloud computing presents many challenges for industry and academia. We highlight the most important ones: the definition and the formalization of cloud computing, the interoperation between different clouds, the creation of standards, security, scalability, fault tolerance, and organizational aspects. 1. Cloud definition 2. Cloud interoperability and standards 3. Scalability and fault tolerance 4. Security, trust, and privacy 5. Organizational aspects 1. Cloud definition: (a) It characterizes cloud computing as on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource-pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service; classifies services as SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS; and categorizes deployment models as public, private, community, and hybrid clouds. (b) Santa Barbara which departs from the XaaS concept and tries to define an ontology for cloud computing. In their work the concept of a cloud is dissected into five main layers: applications, software environments, software infrastructure, software kernel, and hardware. (c) Each layer addresses the needs of a different class of users within the cloud computing community and most likely builds on the underlying layers. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

86 Internet Computing and Ethics 2. Cloud interoperability and standards: (a) Cloud computing is a service-based model for delivering IT infrastructure and applications like utilities such as power, water, and electricity. (b) Vendor lock-in constitutes one of the major strategic barriers against the seamless adoption of cloud computing at all stages. (c) Vendor lock-in can prevent a customer from switching to another competitor’s solution, or when this is possible, it happens at considerable conversion cost and requires significant amounts of time. (d) The presence of standards that are actually implemented and adopted in the cloud computing community could give room for interoperability and then lessen the risks resulting from vendor lock-in. (e) The current state of standards and interoperability in cloud computing resembles the early Internet era, when there was no common agreement on the protocols and technologies used and each organization had its own network. (f) The Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an attempt to provide a common format for storing the information and metadata describing a virtual machine image. (g) The challenge is providing standards for supporting the migration of running instances, thus allowing the real ability of switching from one infrastructure vendor to another in a completely transparent manner. 3. Scalability and fault tolerance: (a) The ability to scale on demand constitutes one of the most attractive features of cloud computing. Clouds allow scaling beyond the limits of the existing in-house IT resources, whether they are infrastructure (compute and storage) or applications services. (b) To implement such a capability, the cloud middleware has to be designed with the principle of scalability along different dimensions in mind—for example, performance, size, and load. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 87 (c) The cloud middleware manages a huge number of resource and users, which rely on the cloud to obtain the horsepower that they cannot obtain within the premises without bearing considerable administrative and maintenance costs. 4. Security, trust, and privacy: (a) Security, trust, and privacy issues are major obstacles for massive adoption of cloud computing. The traditional cryptographic technologies are used to prevent data tampering and access to sensitive information. (b) For example, it might be possible that applications hosted in the cloud can process sensitive information; such information can be stored within a cloud storage facility using the most advanced technology in cryptography to protect data and then be considered safe from any attempt to access it without the required permissions. (c) The lack of control over their own data and processes also poses severe problems for the trust we give to the cloud service provider and the level of privacy we want to have for our data. (d) When a violation of privacy or illegal access to sensitive information is detected, it could become difficult to identify who is liable for such violations. The challenges in this area are, then, mostly concerned with devising secure and trustable systems from different perspectives: technical, social, and legal. 5. Organizational aspects: (a) Cloud computing introduces a significant change in the way IT services are consumed and managed. (b) More precisely, storage, compute power, network infrastructure, and applications are delivered as metered services over the Internet. (c) A wide acceptance of cloud computing will require a significant change to business processes and organizational boundaries. In particular, the following questions have to be considered: (i) What is the new role of the IT department in an enterprise that completely or significantly relies on the cloud? CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

88 Internet Computing and Ethics (ii) How will the compliance department perform its activity when there is a considerable lack of control over application workflows? (iii) What are the implications (political, legal, etc.) for organizations that lose control over some aspects of their services? (iv) What will be the perception of the end users of such services? (d) One of the major advantages of moving IT infrastructure and services to the cloud is to reduce or completely remove the costs related to maintenance and support. (e) At the same time, the existing IT staff is required to have a different kind of competency and, in general, fewer skills, thus reducing their value. Cloud Computing Applications  Online File storage  Photo editing software  Digital video software  Twitter-related applications  Creating image-album  Web application for antivirus  Word processing application  Presentation software  Finding a way on the map  E-commerce software  Miscellaneous applications  Online File Storage: MediaFire, megaupload, hotfile, 4Shared, rapidshare, yourfilehost are such examples which are used to host files including documents, images, presentation, videos, etc. The interface is easy to use, and users can upload and download files from these sites. Here users can utilize 200GB of storage space and a file size of 2GB. The charge for the premium version of these cloud storage application is an average of $9. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 89  Photo editing software: Picnik, Pixlr, etc. are popular free online photo editing software. This online software has features such as cropping of the image, resizing, rotation based on degrees, special effects, addition and editing features are also included in a GUI (Graphical User Interface) format. Some of them offer paint tools and other adjustment features. The brightness and contrast can also be editable, and users can layer the images. In the case of Pixlr, though it has various high-level, complex features, still it’s easy to use.  Digital video software: Hulu is a free application for videos that are found online for free. Cloud users can download popular movies, television shows, and documentaries and view them on their web-browser. Hulu is a joint venture of three firms viz. – Fox Entertainment Group, NBC Universal and ABC Inc. There are other popular video sites like – WatchMoviesOnline, the most famous YouTube, Google video, etc.  Twitter-related applications: One example is bit.ly which converts long URL into a short small-sized unique URL. When a user clicks that small unique URL, it redirects the user to that real website. Sometimes it seems harmful as hackers can put malicious attachments or programs with it which can further affect the user. Ly made a partnership with Twitter, to allow twitter users to use shortened URLs. There is also another site name Twitpic which allows the user to upload pictures to be linked from twitter. It uses twitters login, creates shorterened URLs that can be invoked from twitters microblogging  Creating image-album: Some of the examples are flickr, photobucket, webshots, imagebam and ziddu that allows users to host images on the web. These sites are a part of the cloud that allows users to organize images into albums and create slideshows for free.  Web application for antivirus: One example is Cloud Antivirus, this application on the cloud is provided by Panda Security – a Spanish company which provides functionality to keep the virus away from a clean system and also detects and fix a system infested with malware or other forms of computer viruses. It has been rated as the best free antivirus application by PC World. This also includes the feature to download it into the CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

90 Internet Computing and Ethics systems, and the checking of malware is done by sending the information of the file to the data-centre of the cloud.  Word processing application: Writeboard is another online word processing and document editing application. It has a unique feature that multiple users can access the same document using this application, edit that document and save the document after editing, but the document will have different versions. But it doesn’t allow importing the word files.  Presentation software: Sliderocket is an online free application to create a presentation. It allows importing of Microsoft’s PowerPoint presentations. Since it is a web-based cloud application, the presentations can be accessed from anywhere within the globe. But the free version doesn’t allow cloud users to edit presentations offline.  Finding a way on the map: Another area where cloud applications became worth popular was finding directions and locations on the web. The leading sites are mapquest, Google Maps, and Yahoo Maps. They are the most useful free online application that helped millions of users in various ways by showing direction and paths and helped people get to their destinations over the last decade.  E-commerce software: Cloud based e-application allows users and e-business to respond quickly to market opportunities and challenges the modern e-commerce is facing. It became for business tycoons to focus on the usage of cloud computing without considering the time and effort involved in implementing a reliable solution. Whatever cloud computing solution they select, the free online application will need to access customer data, product data, fulfillment systems and other operational systems to support e-commerce. Cloud-based e-commerce application provides IT firms, and business leaders evaluate new opportunities without a huge amount of upfront investment.  Miscellaneous applications: One of the 1st utilization of free SaaS applications is to check for the status of packages and items. Applications such as UPS, FedEx, US Postal Service, etc. provide free tracking of packages online. So every users and reader must need to know the benefits that cloud computing gives by providing free applications for users. This can reduce cost OS storage and buy paid software to do different tasks. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 91 3.7 Introduction to Big Data The emergence of new data sources and the need to analyse everything from live data streams in real-time to huge amounts of unstructured content has made many businesses realise that they are now in an era where the spectrum of analytical workloads is so broad that it cannot all be dealt with using a single enterprise data warehouse. It goes well beyond this. While data warehouses are very much a part of the analytical landscape, business requirements are now dictating that a new more complex analytical environment is needed to support a range of analytical workloads that cannot be easily supported in traditional environments. This new environment includes multiple underlying technology platforms in addition to the data warehouse, each of which is optimised for specific analytical workloads. Furthermore, it should be possible to make use of these platforms independently for specific workloads and also together to solve business problems. The objective now is to cater for the complete spectrum of analytical workloads. This includes traditional and new ‘Big Data’ analytical workloads. Big Data is therefore a term associated with the new types of workloads and underlying technologies needed to solve business problems that we could not previously support due to technology limitations, prohibitive cost, or both. Big Data Analytics is about analytical workloads that are associated with some combination of data volume, data velocity and data variety that may include complex analytics and complex data types. For this reason the Big Data Analytics can include the traditional data warehouse environment because some analytical workloads may need both traditional and workload optimized platforms to solve a business problem. The new enterprise analytical environment encompasses traditional data warehousing and other analytical platforms best suited to certain analytical workloads. Big Data does not replace a data warehouse. On the contrary, the data warehouse is an integral part of the extended analytical environment. Analytical requirements and data characteristics will dictate the technology deployed in a Big Data environment. For this reason, Big Data solutions may be implemented on a range of CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

92 Internet Computing and Ethics technology platforms including stream processing engines, relational DBMS, analytical DBMS (e.g., massively parallel Data Warehouse appliances) or on non-relational data management platforms such as a commercialised Hadoop platform or a specialised NoSQL data store e.g., a graph database. More importantly, it could be a combination of all of these that is needed to support business requirements. 3.8 Characteristics Four Key Metrics of Big Data: The 4 Vs Input data to big data systems could be chatter from social networks, web server logs, traffic flow sensors, satellite imagery, broadcast audio streams, banking transactions, MP3s of rock music, the content of web pages, scans of government documents, GPS trails, telemetry from automobiles, financial market data, the list goes on. Are these all really the same thing? To classify matters the 4 Vs of Volume, Velocity, Variety and Variability are commonly used to categorize different aspects of big data. They are a helpful lens through which to view and understand the nature of the data and the software platforms that is available to exploit them. Volume Terabyte records, transactions, tables, files The name ‘Big Data’ itself is related to a size which is enormous. Size of data plays very crucial role in determining value out of data. Also, whether a particular data can actually be considered as a Big Data or not, is dependent upon volume of data. Hence, ‘Volume’ is one characteristic which needs to be considered while dealing with ‘Big Data’. A Boeing Jet Engine spews out 10 TB of operational data for every 30 minutes they run. Hence a 4-engine Jumbo Jet can create 640 TB on one Atlantic crossing. Multiply that to 25000 flights flown each day and you get the picture. Velocity Batch, near-time, real-time, streams Velocity refers to the speed of generation of data. How fast the data is generated and processed to meet the demands, determines real potential in the data. Big Data velocity deals with CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Cloud Computing 93 the speed at which data flows in from sources like business processes, application logs, networks and social media sites, sensors, mobile devices etc. The flow of data is massive and continuous. Today’s on-line ad serving requires 40 ms to respond with a decision. Financial services need near 1 ms to calculate customer scoring probabilities. Stream data, such as movies, need to travel at high speed for proper rendering. Variety Structured, Semi-structured, Unstructured: Text, image, audio, video, record and all the above in a mix.Variety refers to heterogeneous sources and the nature of data, both structured and unstructured. During earlier days, spreadsheets and databases were the only sources of data considered by most of the applications. Nowadays, data in the form of emails, photos, videos, monitoring devices, PDFs, audio etc. is also being considered in the analysis applications. This variety of unstructured data poses certain issues for storage, mining and analysing data. WalMart processes 1 M customer transactions per hour and feeds information to a database estimated at 2.5 PB. There are old and new data sources like RFID, sensors, mobile payments, in- vehicle tracking etc. Variability: This refers to the inconsistency which can be shown by the data at times, thus hampering the process of being able to handle and manage the data effectively. 3.9 Sources of Big Data Just like the data storage formats have evolved, the sources of data have also evolved and are ever expanding. There is a need for storing the data into a wide variety of formats. With the evolution and advancement of technology, the amount of data that is being generated is ever increasing. Sources of Big Data can be broadly classified into six different categories as shown below. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

94 Internet Computing and Ethics Archives Enterprise Transactional Public Data Data Data Big Social Media Data Activity Generated Fig. 3.10: Big data Enterprise Data There are large volumes of data in enterprises in different formats. Common formats include flat files, emails, Word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, HTML pages/documents, pdf documents, XMLs, legacy formats, etc. This data that is spread across the organization in different formats is referred to as Enterprise Data. Transactional Data Every enterprise has some kind of applications which involve performing different kinds of transactions like Web Applications, Mobile Applications, CRM Systems, and many more. To support the transactions in these applications, there are usually one or more relational databases as a backend infrastructure. This is mostly structured data and is referred to as Transactional Data. Social Media There is a large amount of data getting generated on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, etc. The social networks usually involve unstructured data formats which include text, images, audio, videos, etc. This category of data source is referred to as Social Media. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)