A business distributing goods to a number of locations must be aware of how the transport systems that it depends on work. For example, a manager in a food distribution company needs to understand how the road and (maybe) rail system works; for overseas activities they may need to understand shipping and air freight. Clearly, the manager does not have to be able to design road networks, shipping systems, and so on, but they would be in a better position knowing not just the basics of transportation, but what opportunities exist to maximise business efficiency. This is equally true with Web development, especially for e-commerce. Understanding basic Internet infrastructure allows a manager to avoid certain pitfalls, and empowers them to make well-informed design decisions. For example, while a server may be satisfactory for an e-commerce system, it may fail to perform satisfactorily for all customers simply because data to and from the server may be following routes through the Internet that slow the data down. This kind of situation could arise for a number of reasons, such as issues related to the domain in which the server is located, corporate requirements, or simply government legislation.

Consequently, this unit examines the infrastructure of both the Internet and the World Wide Web, and how these two systems interact. We briefly examine how data is broken up and routed between the data source and its destination. We look at the Internet protocol suite, TCP/IP, at IP numbers and Fully Qualified Domain Names. Understanding these aspects of the Internet will allow you to understand why some Web applications fail to live up to expectations.