Required facilities

Required facilities

The merchant must understand that purchasing products over Internet requires a significant investment in software, hardware and services. The majority of Internet merchants will be unlikely to set up their own secure servers, because doing so can be complicated for the Internet novice, and also because there are so many companies now offering such services. However, merchants who are aware of what their options are can be smarter consumers of these services, and customers who are aware of how their online orders are processed can be smarter online consumers.

Hardware

Any computer that can run an implementation of TCP/IP and that can be connected to Internet can be a www server. The system should have more processing power, should have sufficient hard disk to store all information fast, Internet connection to support maximum expected load, security features to protect system from unauthorized access.

Some organizations using Internet may prefer to simply get a server and an Internet connection and leave their internal networks out of the loop. Some kind of firewalls is necessary to protect their network from intruders.

Software

TCP/IP implementation is necessary for web server. This may be built in to the operating system, or it may be a part of web server package. System administrators make sure that there is no other software on Internet servers. This guarantees that if an intruder should compromise that system, no network is available to intruder for further mischief. This is the software that responds to requests from browsers on the Internet and sends out the desired information. Security should be a part of the operating system.