E-Governance

Module 3: E-Governance: Introduction to E-Commerce, E-Commerce framework, anatomy of E-Commerce applications, NSFNET, Architecture and components, national research educational network, globalization of academic network, Internet Governance - The Internet society, an overview of Internet applications

E-Governance

Electronic governance or e-governance implies government functioning with the application of ICT (Information and Communications Technology). Hence e-Governance is basically a move towards SMART governance implying: simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent governance.

Electronic governance or e-governance is the application of information technology for delivering government services, exchange of information, communication transactions, integration of various stand-alone systems between government to citizen (G2C), government-to-business (G2B), government-to-government (G2G), government-to-employees (G2E) as well as back-office processes and interactions within the entire governance framework. Through e-governance, government services are made available to citizens through IT. The three main target groups that can be distinguished in governance concepts are government, citizens, and businesses/interest groups.

Introduction to E-Commerce

E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet. These business transactions occur either as business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), consumer-to-consumer or consumer-to-business.

The terms e-commerce and e-business are often used interchangeably. The term e-tail is also sometimes used in reference to the transactional processes that make up online retail shopping.

In the last two decades, widespread use of e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay has contributed to substantial growth in online retail. In 2011, e-commerce accounted for 5% of total retail sales, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2020, with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it had risen to over 16% of retail sales.

How does e-commerce work?

E-commerce is powered by the internet. Customers access an online store to browse through and place orders for products or services via their own devices.

As the order is placed, the customer's web browser will communicate back and forth with the server hosting the e-commerce website. Data pertaining to the order will be relayed to a central computer known as the order manager. It will then be forwarded to databases that manage inventory levels; a merchant system that manages payment information, using applications such as PayPal; and a bank computer. Finally, it will circle back to the order manager. This is to make sure that store inventory and customer funds are sufficient for the order to be processed.

After the order is validated, the order manager will notify the store's web server. It will display a message notifying the customer that their order has been successfully processed. The order manager will then send order data to the warehouse or fulfillment department, letting it know the product or service can be dispatched to the customer. At this point tangible or digital products may be shipped to a customer, or access to a service may be granted.

Platforms that host e-commerce transactions include online marketplaces that sellers sign up for, such as Amazon; software as a service (SaaS) tools that allow customers to "rent" online store infrastructures; or open source tools that companies manage using their in-house developers.

E-Commerce framework

What is an Ecommerce Framework?

An ecommerce framework refers to the type of software you’re using to build your ecommerce store. For example, ecommerce software Magento uses an open source framework, while BigCommerce is SaaS. Both also enable a headless framework.Talk to our sales team to learn more about BigCommerce's ecommerce framework.

Types of Ecommerce Frameworks

You can choose among three primary types of ecommerce frameworks. All three will work a little bit differently, and all three have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Those frameworks are:

SaaS.

Open source.

Headless commerce.

1. SaaS Ecommerce Framework.

SaaS stands for “software as a service.” Users subscribe — as opposed to buying — to software that the vendor continues to host, maintain and improve. SaaS platforms, on average, come with more out-of-the-box functionality. And, while customization is limited, SaaS platforms today are becoming more and more flexible thanks to APIs and pre-built integrations.

Pros:

The vendor can push out real-time feature upgrades as they continue to improve the software over time. 

Total cost of ownership is typically much less than with an open source or headless commerce frameworks. 

SaaS can help you get to market quickly.

Security and maintenance are included in your costs, and you won’t have to worry about hosting.

Cons:

Not as customizable as open source or headless commerce frameworks.

2. Open Source Ecommerce Framework.

Open source software is software that allows users to access and change the source code on their own software instance. It’s often — but not always — written in PHP, a popular general purpose scripting language. Open source ecommerce platforms offer a high level of customization, but it comes at a cost. 

You’ll need developers to not just make the customization's you want, but also to maintain the code over time — the more customization, the higher the risk of unintended consequences — and ensure continued cybersecurity defenses to protect your business and your shoppers.

Pros:

Almost limitless customization opportunities. 

Engaged communities of developers.

Cons:

You’ll be responsible for installing software updates and security patches.

The ability to customize also means that the software is more complex, and you’ll be more reliant on developers not just at implementation but over the lifecycle of your business.

The TCO is typically high once you factor in all the related extraneous costs. (No software is ever truly “free.”)

3. Headless Ecommerce Framework.

Headless commerce decouples the back- and front-ends so retailers can choose their own front-end presentation layer to deliver a differentiated customer experience by leveraging a composable architecture approach. This also gives you the opportunity to take a multi-vendor approach, using one vendor for the back-end solution and something different on the front.

Decoupled approaches like headless are a potential advantage to enterprise businesses because they allow for greater freedom and control. You can also develop some elements of your system to operate independently from each other instead of having everything be fully joined together.

Pros:

You’ll have the flexibility to use the front-end of your choice, from digital experience platforms to PWAs and more. 

You can use your back-end to power multiple front-ends for a multi-site experience. 

When your front- and back-ends are decoupled, each can undergo development work without risking impacts to each other.

Cons:

The total cost of ownership can be high, because you’ll be paying for your back-end, front-end and development work. 

Architectures can be complex and require developer expertise.

Key Features Your Ecommerce Framework Should Have

Different types of online businesses need different frameworks, because they need to adapt based on different customers or industries. But there should always be some common things you should look for.

1. Product management.

Your products are, obviously, central to your business — so you want to make sure that managing your inventory, from adding products, editing their information and tracking stock levels, is easy to do.

From SKUs and variations (size, color, quantity) to product names and images, some ecommerce frameworks will allow you to get a high-level view or drill down to the specifics with very little technical know-how.

You also want to make sure that your platform can support the number of SKUs you want to carry, and the number of variants per product that you may need in your online shop. 

And if you’re looking to support an omnichannel strategy, make sure your framework supports connecting inventory to online marketplaces like Amazon, ad channels like Google, social media and point of sale (POS) solutions of your choice for a centralized channel management hub.

2. Mobile supported ecommerce.

Shoppers are using mobile devices more and more to browse stores and even to make purchases. That’s why your ecommerce framework has to support a good shopping experience across devices. Mobile commerce was predicted to bring in $314 billion in 2020 — 44% of total ecommerce sales. If you don’t offer a mobile-friendly checkout experience, you could be hurting your growth prospects. 

Pick a framework that lets you create a simplified, user-friendly mobile checkout process. Think fewer fields, bigger buttons and integration of popular mobile payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay and others.

3. Security.

During the first half of 2019, there were at least 23 million stolen credit cards for sale on the dark web. Online stores are an attractive target for hackers. The move to shopping online during the pandemic made it an even more lucrative venture. 

You’re responsible for keeping your customers’ information safe, and it’s important for your business viability and brand reputation to avoid data breaches. According to a study by KPMG, about 30% of customers would stop purchasing from a company temporarily after a data breach. 

Some frameworks, like SaaS and headless commerce with a SaaS back-end, provide some levels of security, while with open source solutions like Magento, you’ll have to manage security controls yourself. That may mean protecting your own servers with managed security or installing security patches from the vendor in a timely fashion.

PCI-DSS compliance. This is a globally-recognized standard for securely processing payments. Vendors pass rigorous testing to earn this status.

SSL/HTTPS support. A SSL certificate is a ‘must’ standard for encrypting sensitive data a buyer provides to your shopping solution during checkout.

Anti-fraud and data security tools. Make sure you can monitor suspicious user activity and block potentially fraudulent transactions and brute force intrusion attempts either natively or using an integrated third-party system.

4. Built-in SEO capabilities.

Several features within an ecommerce framework should support improved SEO capabilities, including control over your URLs, title tags, header tags and metadata. Search engine optimization (SEO) can be a powerful tool to grow your business —  but some ecommerce platforms are better suited in this area than others. Some of the less customizable SaaS platforms will limit your ability to fully optimize. (BigCommerce provides robust SEO functionality.)

5. Extensive plugins or integrations.

Every ecommerce platform will give you some out-of-the-box features, themes and/or templates, but you’ll certainly need some other functionality as well — especially once you discover what your shoppers really want. Identify what, if any, features or functionality you’ll need to add on that doesn’t come native to the platform. 

The future of ecommerce is everywhere — and that’s where the most successful store owners will sell. When investigating an ecommerce platform, you need to know how easy or difficult it will be to integrate social commerce and sell on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. 

If you also run brick-and-mortar operations, you can integrate data from your point-of-sale systems and online storefront to gain a holistic view of customers’ shopping behaviors and inventory in real time.

10 Best Ecommerce Frameworks

There are plenty of ecommerce frameworks on the market today, but the one that’s right for you will depend a lot on your business model, choice of products, intent to scale and even the abilities of your internal team. Let’s look at some of the ten most popular and some of their advantages and disadvantages.

1. BigCommerce.

BigCommerce is a SaaS platform with highly flexible APIs and a strong headless commerce offering. Core platform components enable extension and connection to any other environment. 

Because BigCommerce falls on the more flexible end of the spectrum for SaaS products, it can have a somewhat higher learning curve than some of the alternatives. That said, the platform also offers 24/7 global support and thousands of agency partners to help you launch and maintain your store if needed.

2. Shopify.

Shopify, a hosted ecommerce software, offers a low technical barrier for building a store with basic functionality out of the box. This makes the setup and store management part easy.Some non-native tools require a separate subscription. Integrations with more than 4,100 apps that increase functionality — such as Google Analytics and Smile.io — can be activated in one click.

3. Magento.

Magento is open source software that can be deployed on-premise on your own servers or in the cloud (PaaS). Written in the PHP programming language, Magento is highly flexible and scalable — if you know your way around open-source PHP development, that is. It’s also now part of the Adobe Experience Cloud, so integrates with Adobe products like analytics, a customer data platform and more.

Magento has a large community of experienced developers, but many businesses have migrated off of Magento because of its high dependence on developers to set up, maintain and update your store. Even a basic store on Magento Open Source using a template and no extensions can cost $20,000 to $45,000, depending on complexity. Plus, since you have your own instance of the software, you’ll have to install your own updates and security patches.

4. Volusion.

Volusion was one of the original contenders in the SaaS ecommerce space. Operating since the early 2000s, their shopping cart solution provides a mix of core commerce and SEO/marketing tools for starting and growing your business. In July 2020, Volusion filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to a blog post on Volution’s website, the company is still open and operating as usual.

5. Shift4Shop.

3dcart, as it was formerly known, was acquired by Shift4 payments — one of the leading payment processors — to create Shift4Shop. 

Shift4Shop comes stacked with more out-of-the-box features than most SaaS platforms, but that can make it somewhat challenging to use.

6. Woocommerce.

WooCommerce is a popular self-hosted, open source framework for WordPress websites. Developed and maintained by Automattic, WooCommerce has a decent starter selection of essential ecommerce features for checkout. 

Because it’s open source, you have complete control over customization and store management. You’ll also find a large community of WooCommerce Meetup groups that you can tap into for help managing your store. 

The disadvantage is that many must-have shopping cart features such as single-page checkout, abandoned cart recovery and discounts are not available natively (unlike a solution like BigCommerce). Plus, adding additional payment, catalog management, and marketing features becomes costly and time consuming.

7. Kibo.

Kibo Commerce is a unified commerce product designed to enable your teams to deliver personalized experiences across touchpoints. It is an API-first platform built on a microservices model. Kibo was formed in January 2016 by the merging of Fiverun, MarketLive and Shopatron. In 2016, Kibo then acquired Baynote and Mozu, followed by two more 2019 acquisitions: Certona and Monetate.

This developer-centric platform can be complex, with a steep learning curve and potentially high total cost of ownership. They have just 18 solution partners to help bolster store functionality, and because their market presence is low it can be difficult to find the information you need online.

8. Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware).

Salesforce Commerce Cloud (previously Demandware, prior to acquisition by Salesforce) is a SaaS platform for businesses that want to streamline their omnichannel operations. It enables you to manage sales in digital and physical channels from one solution and includes native AI tools for personalization. 

One disadvantage of Salesforce Commerce Cloud is the relatively small number of agency partners that are familiar with designing and developing on the platform.

9. Squarespace.

Squarespace enables quick and easy site updates and media management rather than requiring an outside developer. This SaaS framework offers  template designs and built-in inventory tools. 

But if you don’t understand all the features, you may miss some crucial elements that could take your site even further. Some disadvantages to choosing Squarespace include that it only offers integration with four payment processors — and if you’re subscribing to their cheapest plan, you’ll pay a 3% transaction fee on every sale.

10. Wix.

Wix is a SaaS platform geared toward small businesses. It’s quick and easy to get started, and you can drag-and-drop to create your site. Design is simple with Wix, as you’ll have access to 500+ templates.

Anatomy of E-Commerce applications

•Multimedia Content for E-Commerce Applications

•Multimedia Storage Servers & E-Commerce Applications

              i. Client-Server Architecture in Electronic Commerce   

              ii. Internal Processes of Multimedia Servers

              iii. Video Servers & E-Commerce

•Information Delivery/Transport & E-Commerce Applications

•Consumer Access Devices

Multimedia Content for E-Commerce Applications

•Multimedia content can be considered both fuel and traffic for electronic commerce applications.

•The technical definition of multimedia is the use of digital data in more than one format, such as the combination of text, audio, video, images, graphics, numerical data, holograms, and animations in a computer file/document. See in Fig.

•Multimedia is associated with Hardware components in different networks.

•The Accessing of multimedia content depends on the hardware capabilities of the customer.

Multimedia Storage Servers & E-Commerce Applications

•E-Commerce requires robust servers to store and distribute large amounts of digital content to consumers.

•These Multimedia storage servers are large information warehouses capable of handling various content, ranging from books, newspapers, advertisement catalogs, movies, games, & X-ray images.

•These servers, deriving their name because they serve information upon request, must handle large-scale distribution, guarantee security, & complete reliability

i. Client-Server Architecture in Electronic Commerce

•All e-commerce applications follow the client-server model

•Clients are devices plus software that request information from servers or interact known as message passing

•Mainframe computing , which meant for “dump”

•The client server model, allows client to interact with server through request-reply sequence governed by a paradigm known as message passing.

•The server manages application tasks, storage & security & provides scalability-ability to add more clients and client devices( like Personal digital assistants to Pc’s. See in fig.

ii. Internal Processes of Multimedia Servers

•The internal processes involved in the storage, retrieval & management of multimedia data objects are integral to e-commerce applications.

•A multimedia server is a hardware & software combination that converts raw data into usable information & then dishes out.

•It captures, processes, manages, & delivers text, images, audio & video.

•It must do to handle thousands of simultaneous users.

•Include high-end symmetric multiprocessors, clustered architecture, and massive parallel systems.

iii. Video Servers & E-Commerce

The electronic commerce applications related to digital video will include

1. Telecommunicating and video conferencing

2. Geographical information systems that require storage & navigation over maps

3. Corporate multimedia servers

4. Postproduction studios

5. shopping kiosks.

•Consumer applications will include video-on-demand.

•The figure which is of video–on demand consist video servers, is an link between the content providers (media) & transport providers (cable operators)

Information Delivery/Transport & E-Commerce Applications

•Transport providers are principally telecommunications, cable, & wireless industries.

Information Transport Providers	Information Delivery Methods
•Telecommunication companies	long-distance telephone lines;  local telephone lines
•Cable television companies	Cable TV coaxial, fiber optic & satellite lines
•Computer-based on-line servers	Internet; commercial on-line service providers
•Wireless communications	Cellular & radio networks; paging systems

Consumer Access Devices

Information Consumers	Access Devices
•Computers with audio & video capabilities	Personal/desktop computing Mobile computing
•Telephonic devices	Videophone
•Consumer electronics	Television + set-top box Game systems
•Personal digital assistants (PDAs)	Pen-based computing, voice-driven computing

NSFNET

Short for National Science Foundation Network. NSFNET is a wide area network started by the NSF (National Science Foundation) that handled a bulk of early Internet traffic. It went online in 1986 and during the late 1980s and early 1990s was a crucial backbone to ARPANET and the Internet. During 1990 and 1991, NSFNET was restructured and created a not-for-profit entity and a for-profit subsidiary for commercial development of the network.

On April 30, 1995, NSF removed the NSFNET from the Internet but continued as a separate network for further research and development. After being shut down, this allowed more commercial companies to operate and expand on the Internet and helped started the dot-com boom.

NSFNet was a major force in the development of computing infrastructure and enhanced network services. By making high-speed networking available to national computer centers and inter-linked regional networks, NSFNet created a network of networks, which laid the foundation for today’s Internet.

NSFNet was dismantled in 1995 and replaced with a commercial Internet backbone.

Techopedia Explains National Science Foundation Network

NSFNet was initiated by the National Science Foundation in 1985 as a 56 Kbps backbone. Between 1987 and 1995, it was upgraded to reach T1 and T3 speeds, reaching thousands of institutions. NSFNet was a major contributor to the networking infrastructure that made the Internet possible.

Architecture and components

What Does Component Architecture Mean? 

A Component Architecture is an architecture based on replaceable components as described in Concept: Component. Because Component Architectures are based on independent, replaceable, modular components, they help to manage complexity and encourage re-use.

Component-based architecture focuses on the decomposition of the design into individual functional or logical components that represent well-defined communication interfaces containing methods, events, and properties. It provides a higher level of abstraction and divides the problem into sub-problems, each associated with component partitions.

The primary objective of component-based architecture is to ensure component reusability. A component encapsulates functionality and behaviors of a software element into a reusable and self-deployable binary unit. There are many standard component frameworks such as COM/DCOM, JavaBean, EJB, CORBA, .NET, web services, and grid services. These technologies are widely used in local desktop GUI application design such as graphic JavaBean components, MS ActiveX components, and COM components which can be reused by simply drag and drop operation.

Component-oriented software design has many advantages over the traditional object-oriented approaches such as −

Reduced time in market and the development cost by reusing existing components.

Increased reliability with the reuse of the existing components.

What is a Component?

A component is a modular, portable, replaceable, and reusable set of well-defined functionality that encapsulates its implementation and exporting it as a higher-level interface.

A component is a software object, intended to interact with other components, encapsulating certain functionality or a set of functionalities. It has an obviously defined interface and conforms to a recommended behavior common to all components within an architecture.

A software component can be defined as a unit of composition with a contractually specified interface and explicit context dependencies only. That is, a software component can be deployed independently and is subject to composition by third parties.

Views of a Component

A component can have three different views − object-oriented view, conventional view, and process-related view.

Object-oriented view

A component is viewed as a set of one or more cooperating classes. Each problem domain class (analysis) and infrastructure class (design) are explained to identify all attributes and operations that apply to its implementation. It also involves defining the interfaces that enable classes to communicate and cooperate.

Conventional view

It is viewed as a functional element or a module of a program that integrates the processing logic, the internal data structures that are required to implement the processing logic and an interface that enables the component to be invoked and data to be passed to it.

Process-related view

In this view, instead of creating each component from scratch, the system is building from existing components maintained in a library. As the software architecture is formulated, components are selected from the library and used to populate the architecture.

A user interface (UI) component includes grids, buttons referred as controls, and utility components expose a specific subset of functions used in other components.

Other common types of components are those that are resource intensive, not frequently accessed, and must be activated using the just-in-time (JIT) approach.

Many components are invisible which are distributed in enterprise business applications and internet web applications such as Enterprise JavaBean (EJB), .NET components, and CORBA components.

Characteristics of Components

Reusability − Components are usually designed to be reused in different situations in different applications. However, some components may be designed for a specific task.

Replaceable − Components may be freely substituted with other similar components.

Not context specific − Components are designed to operate in different environments and contexts.

Extensible − A component can be extended from existing components to provide new behavior.

Encapsulated − A A component depicts the interfaces, which allow the caller to use its functionality, and do not expose details of the internal processes or any internal variables or state.

Independent − Components are designed to have minimal dependencies on other components.

Principles of Component−Based Design

A component-level design can be represented by using some intermediary representation (e.g. graphical, tabular, or text-based) that can be translated into source code. The design of data structures, interfaces, and algorithms should conform to well-established guidelines to help us avoid the introduction of errors.

The software system is decomposed into reusable, cohesive, and encapsulated component units.

Each component has its own interface that specifies required ports and provided ports; each component hides its detailed implementation.

A component should be extended without the need to make internal code or design modifications to the existing parts of the component.

Depend on abstractions component do not depend on other concrete components, which increase difficulty in expendability.

Connectors connected components, specifying and ruling the interaction among components. The interaction type is specified by the interfaces of the components.

Components interaction can take the form of method invocations, asynchronous invocations, broadcasting, message driven interactions, data stream communications, and other protocol specific interactions.

For a server class, specialized interfaces should be created to serve major categories of clients. Only those operations that are relevant to a particular category of clients should be specified in the interface.

A component can extend to other components and still offer its own extension points. It is the concept of plug-in based architecture. This allows a plugin to offer another plugin API.

Component-Level Design Guidelines

Creates a naming conventions for components that are specified as part of the architectural model and then refines or elaborates as part of the component-level model.

Attains architectural component names from the problem domain and ensures that they have meaning to all stakeholders who view the architectural model.

Extracts the business process entities that can exist independently without any associated dependency on other entities.

Recognizes and discover these independent entities as new components.

Uses infrastructure component names that reflect their implementation-specific meaning.

Models any dependencies from left to right and inheritance from top (base class) to bottom (derived classes).

Model any component dependencies as interfaces rather than representing them as a direct component-to-component dependency.

Conducting Component-Level Design

Recognizes all design classes that correspond to the problem domain as defined in the analysis model and architectural model.

Recognizes all design classes that correspond to the infrastructure domain.

Describes all design classes that are not acquired as reusable components, and specifies message details.

Identifies appropriate interfaces for each component and elaborates attributes and defines data types and data structures required to implement them.

Describes processing flow within each operation in detail by means of pseudo code or UML activity diagrams.

Describes persistent data sources (databases and files) and identifies the classes required to manage them.

Develop and elaborates behavioral representations for a class or component. This can be done by elaborating the UML state diagrams created for the analysis model and by examining all use cases that are relevant to the design class.

Elaborates deployment diagrams to provide additional implementation detail.

Demonstrates the location of key packages or classes of components in a system by using class instances and designating specific hardware and operating system environment.

The final decision can be made by using established design principles and guidelines. Experienced designers consider all (or most) of the alternative design solutions before settling on the final design model.

Advantages

Ease of deployment − As new compatible versions become available, it is easier to replace existing versions with no impact on the other components or the system as a whole.

Reduced cost − The use of third-party components allows you to spread the cost of development and maintenance.

Ease of development − Components implement well-known interfaces to provide defined functionality, allowing development without impacting other parts of the system.

Reusable − The use of reusable components means that they can be used to spread the development and maintenance cost across several applications or systems.

Modification of technical complexity − A component modifies the complexity through the use of a component container and its services.

Reliability − The overall system reliability increases since the reliability of each individual component enhances the reliability of the whole system via reuse.

System maintenance and evolution − Easy to change and update the implementation without affecting the rest of the system.

Independent − Independency and flexible connectivity of components. Independent development of components by different group in parallel. Productivity for the software development and future software development.

 

National research educational network

What is the National Research and Education Network?

A national research and education network (NREN) is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country.

NRENs

National research and education networks (NRENs) are specialised internet service providers dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within their own country. 

The primary focus of NRENs is to provide universities and research institutes with high-quality network connectivity and related services by connecting campuses and institutions to each other, and to the rest of the internet. NRENs in the GÉANT region provide services to more than 80% of all university-level students, as well as to researchers, educators and other campus staff and visitors. Many NRENs go beyond this by also connecting schools, institutes of further education, libraries, museums, hospitals and other public service institutions.

Most NRENs also specialise in providing expertise and support in a range of other technologies and service areas, such as trust and identity, security, storage, and collaboration. These may be bespoke to an NREN or part of a pan-European service offered by many NRENs in the GÉANT collaboration but delivered in a federated manner.​

A national multi‐gigabit‐per‐second research and education network known as the National Research and Education Network is to be established by 1996, according to the High‐Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102–194) passed in December 1991. Commonly known as the NREN and referred to as the “information highway,” this electronic network is expected to provide scientific, educational, and economic benefits for the United States and to serve as the basis for an all‐encompassing National Information Infrastructure available to all citizens. The idea of the NREN began in the late 1960s in the Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with the development of ARPANet, the first packet‐switching network. This evolved into the Internet, or Interim NREN, after the National Science Foundation (NSF) linked its national supercomputing centers with the NSFNet. The NSFNet is to be the technological backbone for the NREN, which will continue the networking begun by the Internet. Initially, the NREN is intended to interconnect researchers and resources of research institutions, educational institutions, industry, and government in every state.

Globalization of academic network

Internet Governance - The Internet society

An overview of Internet applications