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Welcome to the introduction to networks topic. In this section, we will discuss 3 main issues:

This is a 2 week topic so Part 1 should be completed in the first week and then parts 2 and 3 in the second week.

Whether they realize it or not, most modern computer users rarely, if ever, use a computer that is not part of a network in some fashion. Even those who use a simple phone modem to communicate with the internet or WWW are part of a network at some point. Computer networks allow computers to share information, peripherals, and even resources such as processing power. The internet is by far the largest network. It is actually a collection of networks around the world. Within the internet, there are countless numbers of smaller networks. In this module, we will examine the basics of networking, look at a few real world examples, and then investigate the internet as a network.

Strictly speaking, a network is a group of computers (2 or more) and other devices connected by some type of transmission media, thus communicating with each other. In communicating with each other, there are both voice and data networks and some networks are made up of both voice and data components. Regardless of the type of communication, there will always be a sender, a receiver, a signal (the message or data) and some medium through which the signal is passed. In any network, there are many variations on the hardware, software, media, and design elements. As earlier noted, networks enable users to share devices and data, that are collectively called a network’s resources. One of the major advantages of a network is the ability to centrally manage the hardware, software, and users.

In the most simplistic sense of the word, a network may be thought of as connecting two (2) or more computers for the purposes of sharing data or information. In reality, if you simply connect a few computers together using a single cable, then you are really creating a peer-to-peer network. These computers can now share a limited number of resources, disk or hard drive space being a prime example. This is illustrated below.

An example of a peer-to-peer network may be running a software application off of a shared computer. Actually, the chemistry department here at Juniata College sometimes does this for specialized software. This software program is loaded onto a computer and then the computer is “shared”. Now others can “browse” to this shared computer and run the software. As noted, this is not the most efficient network as only some resources are shared. In addition, in a peer-to-peer network, no one computer really has authority over another and thus there may be security issues. To improve efficiency a server based network is created.

Server-based networks use a special computer (usually a more powerful processor and more memory) to process data and facilitate communication between other computers on the network. This server manages the network's resources, such as file sharing, and data and communication requests. It also manages security by determining what data is allowed to travel to various computers on the network. While the server manages the requests, the “client” places the requests, thus we have a client/server network system or architecture.

Within a client-server architecture, the clients are generally desktop workstations or PC’s. When you plug your computer into the wall of your dorm room, you essentially join the network that we call EAGLENET. You become a “node” on EAGLENET. While your PC is a client and runs the software packages that you are used to seeing, the servers (we have over 40 at the present time), have a special software system called a Network Operating System (NOS) that is designed to manage data, security, users (people), and applications for a number of clients. The figure below illustrates a very simple network with one server and four (4) clients.

The simple example above is referred to as a local area network or LAN. This is because the computers are in a “local area”. If the network covered a large or “wide” area, then we may refer to it as a wide area network or WAN. There is not necessarily a clear-cut line in size between a LAN and a WAN. For example, we could consider the network and all of the computers here at Juniata College to be LAN. However, we recently added a number of computers and peripherals at the Juniata College Raystown Field Station (RFS) that is approximately 20 miles from campus. When we extended out to the RFS, we really have a WAN, with two (2) LAN’s (one on campus and one at the RFS). A WAN is often thought of as connecting two (2) geographically distinct LAN’s. Essentially, the internet is the ultimate example of a WAN, as it connects millions of LAN’s together!

There are a number of advantages of server-based systems over peer-to-peer systems. Several are noted in the bulleted list below:

In addition, each of the nodes typically needs a network interface card or NIC. This is a device that allows a computer or work station to connect to the network.

The network topology is the “logical” design of the network. This is to say – how the servers and clients are connected. The physical is the actual or physical equipment that is used. The network topology is highly dependent on the needs and resources (often funding and space) of the organization that will use the network. While there are an infinite number of network topologies, there are a few common topologies that are basically repeated over and over to form complex networks. These are a bus, ring, and star.

A BUS topology is a very simple network design. There is typically a server and then a single transmission line from which all of the clients or nodes break off. A BUS topology is then terminated at the end to prevent signal from continuing. The figure below illustrates this.

As the name implies, a RING topology is one where the primary transmission line is in the form of a ring that is connected to form a continuous ring. This is illustrated below.

In a STAR topology, all of the nodes radiate out from a central point (usually the server).

Each of the above topologies has advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes physical space or other physical constraints may dictate the type of network topology. Many organizations have a combination of the above topologies or a hybrid topology. Juniata College has a hybrid topology. A hybrid may look like the example below.

Actually, both LAN’s and WAN’s are potentially made up of a variety of network topologies. As was discussed earlier, a WAN usually connects several LAN’s that are geographically separated. This is illustrated below.

A network medium is the vital component that a telecommunications device, in a communications system, that is used to transfer a network message between the sender and a receiver.

There are two primary mediums used in networks today, each having a distinct set of underlying characteristics:

A typical TP (twisted-pair) cable contains two or more twisted pairs of copper wires either with or without plastic shielding. TP wiring is commonly used for phone connectivity, desktop (client) connectivity, and for local Internet (demarcation) connectivity.

A coaxial, more frequently referred to as ‘Coax cable’, consists of an inner conductor wire surrounded by insulation. It is commonly used for cable television, cable modem, and original networks that supported Ethernet, Token Ring, and Mainframe connectivity.

Fiber is made up of many extremely thin strands of glass that are bound together within a plastic sheathing. Each strand of glass transmits signals by passing a series of high-intensity light beams generated by laser beams. Fiber is used to create network infrastructures, or backbones, by organizations and large telecommunications companies.

Microwave and satellite transmissions send their transmissions through the air (and space). Although this medium does not entail the use of a wired connection, their implementation price is fairly high. The basic difference between the two is that a microwave transmission must be line of site versus a satellite (microwave station) that is launched into space.

These two mediums types are fairly new to network communications. RF utilizes radio waves very similar to your car radio but at different frequencies. This medium is the foundation for today’s wireless laptops, PDA’s, and ‘hot spots’ found in large city cafes (like the Huntingdon McDonalds). The cellular medium uses the principle of distributed cell towers that provide continuous signals through the use of regional cell ‘blocks’ where a connection is passed from one cell to another. The primary use of this medium are cell phones but is quickly being expanded to provide data access.

This medium involves the sending of signals through the air using light waves. This type of connectivity is best used in a line of site setup and with a distance under a few hundred yards. You’ve seen it in your remote controls, but is used in a variety of ways today to include handheld computers, keyboards, and some special-purpose phones.

Network management is an area that is crucial, but sometimes forgotten. The importance of the flow of data in today's fully networked environment has brought us to not only have a competent network, but also one that can be predicted in its traffic and its reliability. Do you get upset when you can’t get connected? How about when Moodle is down? With the growth in interest in the Internet and the ability to push all types of media across it, a need has been created where business managers demand planning tools and users expect 100% uptime (the network is connected and functioning). Hardware and software vendors have realized the importance of this characteristic and have built at least one form of network management into all of their products. Almost all network engineers today rely on at least one network management tool. Understanding network traffic can be seen in both data and voice networks. Here at Juniata College, we use a tool (among the many) call Packet Shaper to “shape” our traffic in and out of campus. This allows us to place importance on some types of data flow and less importance on others. As the integration of data, voice, and video becomes more prevalent, truly understand the quality of service that a network needs to provide will become a basic requirement of network knowledge.

As you have already read, the World Wide Web (pronounced “WWW”) is the ultimate example of a network. The WWW is a collection of documents that are available publicly through electronic access. The web is referred to as such because the information it contains does not exist in one location but rather is distributed over a network of millions of computers. The computers which store this information are referred to as web servers. A web server is basically any computer that stores documents and makes them available to a client, in this case, through the Internet. More simply put, a server is defined as the provider of services. A client is the requester of the services. Thus, the term client/server model is often mentioned when discussing internet protocol. We’ll define terms like protocol and other widely used web language as we delve into what is required to understand web server administration.

Basically, people view information available on the internet by going to web sites and viewing web pages with the help of a web browser. A web browser is software designed to retrieve data from web servers and display them on a client computer. The two most widely used web browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Web servers are able to communicate with web browsers by using a network protocol called the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Protocol refers to a set of rules that are followed in order to allow communication between a set of computers. There are numerous types of network protocols. In order to provide a framework for various network protocols, the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model was developed. This framework describes seven layers of functions that occur in communication between points in a network. These seven layers include: physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, and application.

The reason why we come up with standards and develop specifications for data exchange is to enable different systems to exchange meaningful information. This meaningful exchange despite differences in hardware and/or software is referred to as interoperability. So, regardless of whether or not you are using a lap top running XP, a UNIX work station, or a mainframe computer, interoperability aims to allow for communication between devices with such diverse applications.

The World Wide Web follows a communications protocol referred to as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Every web page has a unique HTTP address, also known as a uniform resource locator (URL). When a client requests a specific URL by typing it into their web browser, the server returns a web page. The server uses the information provided in the URL, namely, the web server name, a directory path, and a file name. Before the server can use this information, it must convert the name into an IP address. IP which stands for internet protocol is a set of rules by which data is sent from one computer to another on the internet. An IP address refers to the unique number that is assigned to individual web pages. The most widely installed level of the Internet Protocol to date uses a 32 bit number to identify each sender or receiver of information that is sent in packets over the internet.

Documents on the web are written in a HyperText Markup Language (HTML). HTML is a language that can provide a link to any other page on the internet (this is what is referred to as hypertext) and virtually any computer can read an HTML document because HTML documents are saved in an ASCI or Text only format (this is referred to as the universality feature of HTML). Although there are differences in how a web page appears in different browsers, web page programmers can include formatting commands that will be followed in a certain way by web browsers. A separate tutorial on HTML will get you started writing simple HTML code for your web page.

Overall, this information should help you understand what goes on when you use the internet, If you decide to run your own network server, you’ll need to load an operating system, add service packs, anti-virus, and host intrusion detection software, server software (e.g., HTTPD, or HyperText Transfer Protocol daemon and FTP or file transfer protocol), and various applications packages. Remember, the server is the provider of services. As such, this requires a daemon or software that waits for a request from a client. You still need to use an internet service provider for you connection.

This is a lot to remember! But in-class reviews and other opportunities may help you decide whether or not you want to run your own server or instead outsource this function.

The following URL’s provide overview material, helpful software, or definitions associated with web server administration:

As was mentioned earlier, we will rely heavily on how stuff works. There is a lot of information available in these pages. Rest assured that 10-20 questions on the midterm will come from this section.

g. Neoplanet: Sort of screen saver browser mentality—have lots of skins so you can make it look like whatever you want. More of an IE plug-in than its own browser.

a. Client ( in your browser): These are technologies where most of the work goes on in your browser AND your browser has the built-in capability to handle the information from that file. These files can be saved and run locally for the most part.

ii. DHTML—dynamic html html + some capacity to get dynamic effects from text and images (through tricks and javascript). The following book has some great examples.
http://www.ruleweb.com/dhtml/book.html
but the guru is an even better place to go:
http://www.htmlguru.com/guru.html
this site has its own tutorial and some neat effects. It also has links to other tutorials.

b. Plug-in Driver: These technologies still run mostly locally on your machine, but they require add-in software to run. So in these cases your browser acts as a desktop or a launcher for the file, These files can be saved and run locally for the most part.

c. Server Side: Sever side technologies are script or programs that run on the server side. That is, you cannot run these on your machine unless it is attached to the server. We will do a little with PHP and perl in the bio portion of this course. The other sections will primarily use javascript and html.

ii. Perl: Perl is a fairly advanced scripting language that is widely used on the net. It is server side and quite flexible. It is not very popular in computer science department that like to teach “real computer languages” like C and Java. A warning though there was a time not too long ago when computer science departments didn’t like Java either.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/perl.htm/printable

iii. Cold Fusion: Cold fusion is nifty technology from macromedia that allows the web developer to let the user see as little of the web code as possible. It is another scripting language that allows access to databases, security, nifty graphics, forms etc. It is built-in to dreamweaver.
http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/

v. Java: Developed by Sun. This was supposed to be the software of the internet. Now it is in part, but learning it is a bit of work—you CS types will learn it. It is very popular, but you can get along pretty o.k. without it. Java could also go into the plug-in list as well since many java applets actually run in a Java Virtual Machine locally on your machine, not on the server.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/program.htm/printable
http://java.sun.com/ the guys who invented it.
http://www.blackdown.org/

vi. C (++ and other C#): The language of real programmers—lot of low level functions that give the true computer scientist access to what they call ‘low level functions’ that is if you want to put something on the screen you can put it on the screen. This is different than php or perl, where somebody else has written the low level code in C or assembly to do the work and then the scripting language calls their function. It is a bit like letting someone else pinch run for you.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/c.htm/printable

vii. ISAPI: Short for Internet Server API, an API for Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Server) Web server. ISAPI enables programmers to develop Web-based applications that run much faster than conventional CGI programs because they're more tightly integrated with the Web server. In addition to IIS, several Web servers from companies other than Microsoft support ISAPI.—Webpedia.

viii. CGI: “Abbreviation of Common Gateway Interface, a specification for transferring information between a World Wide Web server and a CGI program. A CGI program is any program designed to accept and return data that conforms to the CGI specification. The program could be written in any programming language, including C, Perl, Java, or Visual Basic. CGI programs are the most common way for Web servers to interact dynamically with users. Many HTML pages that contain forms, for example, use a CGI program to process the form's data once it's submitted. Another increasingly common way to provide dynamic feedback for Web users is to include scripts or programs that run on the user's machine rather than the Web server. These programs can be Java applets, Java scripts, or ActiveX controls. These technologies are known collectively as client-side solutions, while the use of CGI is a server-side solution because the processing occurs on the Web server. One problem with CGI is that each time a CGI script is executed, a new process is started. For busy Web sites, this can slow down the server noticeably. A more efficient solution, but one that is also more difficult to implement, is to use the server's API, such as ISAPI or NSAPI. Another increasingly popular solution is to use Java servlets.” –Webopedia.
Thus basically if a program is running off of a web server it is probably running through CGI. That may not be true of Window 200X servers however where ISAPI is the order of the day.

Streaming Media: MPEG, AVI, Quicktime, etc…yes the new age of the web is probably streaming media. That is audio, video, and other interactive content primarily for advertising, entertainment, and education. The technologies behind this are fast evolving and thus the best way to stay up to date is to read. Try:

http://www.streamingmedia.com/
http://www.streamingmediaworld.com/
http://www.isma.tv/home

To get an overview of what is out there. Streaming media works by having a server on one side of the equation and a player on the other side of the equation. When the media (song, video, etc) is being streamed from a server, the server software sends a small amount of the data to the player which then reads it into a buffer and then begins to play the song or video. The server continues sending until the media is completed or the connection is broken. SO again we are in a client server application world. Even in the P2P (peer to peer) world, one machine acts as a client and the other as a server. SO we will just address the various players and servers very briefly here. There will be another lecture later on in the semester on streaming media as well as a couple workshops and the opportunity to stream your own music or video. If you are in a hurry the university of Wisconsin has a nice tutorial go to https://www.doit.wisc.edu/streaming/tutorial/tutorial4.asp

i. MSMedia: Microsoft’s player http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.aspx
This cite has all the software and tutorials you need to get going with media player and media encoder 9 series. Not high end, but really truly functional.

Pages, sites, & portals:
This section on pages, sites and portals is about the level of organization and how you—the web designer—present yourself to the cyberworld. You could have a single web page with gigabytes of information on it, but that is pretty poorly organized. So we move up a level of organization to web sites. Web sites are a collection of web pages with a navigation structure base on moving from on page another—essentially a book with lots of bookmarks in it. But web sites are really the child of the designer and have two short comings—they need to be updated when new information is wanted, and the end user is pretty much stuck with what the designer puts out there. Portals take web sites to a new level in that they are a web driven interface to a database of information the designer has made available. The rest of this section will provide a little more detail on each of the levels of web egoism.

i. Pages: pages are just that…pages, a single URL that comes up in your browser. You may be able to move or navigate around on the page to markers, but you're still on the same page. A page is usually made up of HTML text and pointers to image (picture) files. The pages occasional contains scripting code such as javascript or PHP that tell the browser to perform a certain task. They can also contain calls using server side languages such as perl to get the server to perform some action such as pulling a file from a database.

ii. Sites: This is a collection of pages with a navigation structure that links them. The better navigation structures have a set of navigation tools that make it easy to get to a desired place on your web site.

iii. Portals: “A Web site or service that offers a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines, and on-line shopping malls. The first Web portals were online services, such as AOL, that provided access to the Web, but by now most of the traditional search engines have transformed themselves into Web portals to attract and keep a larger audience. A Web portal is commonly referred to as simply a "portal"—from webpedia.com

As web server have gotten cheaper and code more available, portals are now becoming commonplace with universities and even individuals. Moodle is a type of portal. Two of the more popular portal systems are:

BAP’s : Big A** Providers: There are some very major players in web service provision. AOL and MSN are the biggest providers.

Backbones: The backbone is the very high speed fiber optic lines that carry the load of the internet traffic. We will not go into this in great detail here as this is the intro section.

Mobile O.S.: This is really an aside here and will be covered later in the semester, but mobile technologies are really hot right now and there is a multi-way battle for the market. The following are a set of links for the major technologies.

And read a case study of an e education award winner. Then please submit a list of ten things we could use from that effort to improve our e-learning here at JC.

Search through the award winners and find the contact information for internships or employment at those companies. Hey you want to work for a winner don’t you? Extra credit: Apply for an internship that you found.

Although each of you have already used the web, we’d like to provide an introduction to you based on how the internet is used. There will be brief intros to the major uses of the net from a human to human (H2H) perspective, a business to business (B2B) perspective, a business to consumer perspective (B2C), and a couple generic uses. The introduction will then borrow heavily from howstuffworks.com to present the technical and social working of “the net.” Finally, there will be two webilates (stretching exercises for the web) and one code raiders assignment.

What it is! There are two really good online introductions to the internet and the web. Internet101 throws way too many ads at you but have a go at it. http://www.internet101.org/

The BBC has a series of on-line internet courses intended to help our allies across the channel become a bit more computer literate. The site is really slow. It has some nifty flash quizzes too. So be warned.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/

Email: The number one internet use. I will assume that you all use email at this point. Thus I will not cover the topic in much detail. For greater learning on the matter of email go to the how it works section below.

Browsing: What made the WWW take off. Note it is also important that it was Tim Berners-Lee that made the first browser called the world wide web that allowed navigating the internet with a graphical user interface.

Chat: The time sink of the internet: Website where people can go in and type messages to each other from a web browser or other chat client. Chat rooms are really easy to program and set up. Most domain hosting companies have an easy to install chat program.

IM: Instant Messaging: A step up from chat in that you can be doing other things and the messenger will only alert you when you have new messages. If you don’t use IM now you probably will soon.

Telephony: Is using software clients at two points on the internet to send digital phone calls. At first this was really nifty since you could bypass the long distance charges. By using the internet as the medium to transmit the call. In some ways internet telephony is just getting started, but probably a long run bust. It was free a bit ago, now it will save you lots, but pretty quickly the drain on resources will require that charges increase. Vonage is hitting the market now at $39.99 a month, the next thing to hit will be taxes. http://vonage.com

Newsgroups: Not really news, more gossip groups than news groups. Essentially they are topic area bulletin boards where you and other people with an interest in a topic such as anime or pets or what have you can post thoughts, rants, events, questions etc.. Most of the major web services have newsgroup links:
http://www.google.com/grphp?hl=en&ie=UTF-8 gives quite a few.

Data Transfer: From file to distributed data warehousing, the net was primarily designed to allow people to transfer data from one place to another. There are a couple protocols that are primarily used for data transfer:

Search Engines: There are many search available on the net the following is a list of the more popular and more comprehensive ones..

Dogpile: http://www.dogpile.com a metsearch utility that really uses other search engines.

Junk Journalism:
The internet and browser capabilities have made folk heroes (ines) and fame for news junkies with a political bent that would never have been possible prior to the internet. See:
http://www.drudgereport.com from the right
http://206.183.2.199/ David Horowitz was a TV guy before.
http://www.counterpunch.com/ (Cockburn has been well known to the left for sometime)
http://www.onlinejournal.com/ a little further left.

Software repositories: One of the many uses of the net that helped it grow was free stuff—free music, free news, free, email, and free software—gigabytes and gigabytes of free software. There are too many sites to give any sort of the list here, but here are a few of the sites I use a lot.
http://www.tucows.com: Lots of free and shareware—all platforms
http://zdnet.com: Lots of free and shareware—all platforms
http://shareware.com: Lots of free and shareware—all platforms
http://sourceforge.net : Lots of free and shareware—better for Linux/Unix, but a great site.
http://www.simtel.net/simselects.php

B2B - ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is the use of network and internet infrastructure to run large manufacturing service and retail industries. The ERP industry is often a tail wagging the dog scene where the tech companies that provide the software define the industry as much as the end users who want the product. IN cases like this, it is often best to look at the major players in the market and see what they have to say. The biggest players in running big business electronically are:

SAP
PeopleSoft
Oracle
Computer Associates

So to get a view of what ERP is, visit the sites or look at the peoplesoft description: (click here). Also the computerworld erp page is pretty good:
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/erp/story/0,10801,79858,00.html

B2B - Customer Relationship Management (CRM)—specialist all the ERP folks do this too. These providers help you track targets and harass your customers to improve business. This is most often on the B2B side of the net, but CRM can benefit the end consumer as well. Two companies with some specialization in CRM are:
SIEBEL
CLARIFY
to get a handle on what CRM is, let's take Siebel’s word on the matter—(Click here)

B2B - Money transactions, Banking: Banking and money transaction have been electronic in the B2B world for a long time. The web has made this a lot easier however allowing business banking to be nearly completely on-line. The modern manager can have payroll done electronically, all of the bills paid electronically, and all the information directly fed into the accounting software. Of course there are dangers to this as a small mistake can snowball into a big problem.
Two pretty good sources of information on online banking and finance in general are:
http://www.onlinebankingreport.com/resources/100.html
http://www.cfo.com

B2B - Stocks: Yahoo has a nice directory of online stock trading firms.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services
/Financial_Services/Investment_Services/Brokerages/Internet_Trading/

B2B - Commodities:
Chicago Mercantile Exchange: Note that the CME has a rather nice set of courses on futures and commodities trading—both in the classroom and on-line. On-line will go in the resume, but you do not meet people if you are into this as a line of work—visit Chicago. (also note the CME site is a cold fusion to oracle based site—see the technologies site).

B2B - Outsourcing: Outsourcing is the management practice of having someone else do a necessary business or management function for you. You can either have your own employee clean the floors, or you can hire another company to make sure your floors are clean and they handle the bother of doing the hiring and firing etc.. The practice isn’t new to the information age or the internet, but the web has made outsourcing of a lot of service work much easier. It is also much cheaper when the network resources allow you to hire people in developing countries to work as though they were here. Some of the major growth sectors in electronic outsourcing include: one of the sites that best describes outsourcing is smarterwork. Outsourcing is expected to surpass 112 billion per year this year and is expected to double in the next 3 to 5 years. There is also a newspage in cio.com about outsourcing. Some of the most notable outsourcing industries that have been enhanced by the net are:

B2B - Call centers: Call centers are where phonebank is located in another country and the call to the US (or other country) are routed to India or Mexico where the cost of hiring a literate person to answer the phone and place orders or give help is $5-$10 a day instead of $5-$10 per hour. The advancements in communication technologies and the internet made these possible and cost effective. See http://www.outsource2india.com/why_india/articles/call_centers_india.asp

B2B - Programming: The net helps programmers working all over the world work on the same project. Like call centers this makes it easy to send programming work to eastern European and Asian countries where highly trained labor is less expensive.

B2B - Legal: Legal help has almost always been outsourced, but the internet has made that much easier now as the research, questions, and answers can now be delivered immediately. Teleconferencing and videoconferencing has also allowed senior and specialized attorney to be a part of cases a long ways away—very much a cost saving to flying and the billable hours associated therein.
http://lawyers.com
https://www.smarterwork.com/

B2B - Research: The provision of market and business data to business is an important part of the net. Some of the big survey houses such as Roper, Harris, and Zogby do internet research as well, but there are some firms that specialize. Forester and Gartner are a couple that I know of:.
http://www.forrester.com/home/0,6092,1-0,FF.html
http://www4.gartner.com/Init
If you are really interested in web expertise from a business perspective, I highly recommend these cites.

B2B - Personnel/Financial Services: These firms do much of what the EPR software firms do, but instead of just setting up the software and doing training, they actually perform many of the business functions for other businesses,

The business to consumer side of the equation has given us some notable successes such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and some failures such as fogdog and egghead. The business to consumer side of the equation fall into two types – the Clicks only or all internet business and the clicks and mortar—businesses that have real stores and internet stores. Most of the major companies now have online ordering capabilities—including Walmart

Goods: You can get anything you want, well nearly anything. There are too many sites to even get started. Here are the top twenty in terms of number of buyers in 1999—did drugstore.com surprise you? (any idea why the prescription drug benefit for seniors is becoming such a hot issue).

Top 20 E-Tailers of September 1999
Rank	Site	Projected No. of Purchasers (000)	Reach (%)	Unique Users (000)	Purchase Rate (%)
1.	amazon.com	1,097	19.1	12,256	9.0
2.	drugstore.com	362	2.9	1,860	19.5
3.	barnesandnoble.com	347	6.7	4,298	8.1
4.	buy.com	316	3.8	2,423	13.0
5.	ticketmaster.com	282	4.1	2,639	10.7
6.	hallmark.com	169	0.4	914	18.4
7.	mothernature.com	164	2.3	1,502	10.9
8.	enews.com	153	4.6	2,947	5.2
9.	planetrx.com	151	2.1	1,366	11.0
10.	gateway.com	146	3.4	2,198	6.7
11.	cdnow.com	143	10.2	6,545	2.2
12.	chipshot.com	112	0.7	446	25.2
13.	beyond.com	105	4.3	2,741	3.8
14.	gap.com	101	1.5	970	10.4
15.	bigstar.com	100	2.0	1,275	7.8
16.	dvdexpress.com	84	0.9	601	14.0
17.	yahoo.com	81	56.6	36,254	0.2
18.	officemax.com	71	1.6	1,044	6.8
19.	etoys.com	69	2.2	1,403	4.9
20.	staples.com	69	1.1	711	9.7

Rank	Company	Volume (000)			Earnings (loss) (000)			Units
	(Head- quarters)	2001	2000	Change	2001	2000	Change	2001	2000	Change	Comments
1	Wal-Mart Bentonville, Ark.	$219,812,000	$193,295,000	+13.7%	$6,671,000	$6,295,000	+6.0%	4,414	4,190	+5.3%	Now the sun rises in Japan for Wal-Mart
2	Home Depot Atlanta	53,553,000	45,738,000	+17.1	3,044,000	2,581,000	+17.9	1,348	1,134	+18.9	More than a billion customers a year
3	Kroger Cincinnati	50,098,000	49,000,400	+2.2	1,042,500	876,900	+18.9	3,534	3,660	-3.4	Streamlining to vie with Wal-Mart
4	Sears Hoffman Estates, Ill.	41,078,000	40,937,000	+0.3	735,000	1,343,000	-45.3	2,960	2,960	--	What will Lands' End bring?>
5	Target Minneapolis	39,362,000	36,362,000	+8.3	1,368,000	1,264,000	+8.2	1,381	1,307	+5.7	May be shedding department stores
6	Albertson's Boise, Idaho	37,931,000	36,762,000	+3.2	501,000	765,000	-34.5	2,400	2,533	-5.3	Sold stores; exited several markets
7	Kmart Troy, Mich.	37,028,000	35,925,000	+3.1	(244,000)>	403,000	--	2,150	2,172	-1.0	Chapter 11 magnified problems, miscues
8	Costco Issaquah, Wash.	34,797,037	32,164,296	+8.2	602,089	631,437	-4.6	369	335	+10.1	No.1 in wine sales
9	Safeway Pleasanton, Calif.	34,301,000	31,976,900	+7.3	1,284,400	1,091,900	+17.6	1,773	1,688	+5.0	Old lease obligations may hurt profits
10	JCPenney Plano, Texas	32,004,000	31,846,000	+0.5	98,000	(705,000)	--	3,770	3,725	+1.2	Wants to double earnings this year
11	Walgreen Deerfield, Ill.	24,623,000	21,206,900	+16.1	885,600	776,900	+14.0	3,520	3,165	+11.2	Spending $1.3 billion to grow in 2002
12	Ahold USA Chantilly, Va.	23,200,000	21,850,000	+6.2	1,300,000	1,114,000	+16.7	1,325	1,040	+27.4	Foodservice no longer in U.S. figures
13	CVS Woonsocket, R.I.	22,241,400	20,087,500	+10.7	398,500	731,400	-45.5	4,191	4,133	+1.4	Says 2002 is a "transition year"
14	Lowe's Wilkesboro, N.C.	22,111,108	18,778,559	+17.7	1,023,262	809,871	+26.3	744	650	+14.5	High hopes for non-traditional goods
15	Best Buy Minneapolis	19,597,000	15,326,552	+27.9	570,000	395,839	+44.0	1,900	1,741	+9.1	Expanding in Canada
16	Federated Dept. Stores Cincinnati	15,651,000	16,638,000	-5.9	(276,000)	(184,000)	--	450	404	+11.4	Paid for misstep in non-store selling
17	Publix Lakeland, Fla.	15,300,000	,000	+4.8	530,400	530,000	+0.1	697	689	+1.2	Stepping up convenience food items
18	Rite Aid Camp Hill, Pa.	15,171,146	14,516,865	+4.5	(827,681)	(1,589,224)	--	3,500	3,648	-4.1	Working hard to remove the tarnish
19	Delhaize America Salisbury, N.C.	14,900,000	12,669,932	+17.6	155,486	155,486	--	1,420	1,276	+11.3	Competition heats up in core markets
20	May Dept. Stores St. Louis	14,175,000	14,511,000	-2.3	703,000	858,000	-18.1	839	550	+52.5	Expanding specialty store

From http://stores.org

So basically the top etailer grosses less than Walmart pays in sales tax, and would not make the top 20 retailers. Over time this will change, but I doubt Amazon or e-bay will challenge the Walton family any time soon.

B2C - Banking: Five years ago there were only a few internet banks. Now even small local banks are wired. You can do almost all your transactions on line. Here is a list of banks based on customer satisfaction (http://banking.yahoo.com/s/index.html) . Note that a couple of the e-banks rank pretty high.

B2C - Other Services: As with retail and finance the other services industries are very well represented on the net.

7. SCAM: Fraud is there, it is rampant and you need to beware of it. It comes in all sizes and shapes—from do-gooder sites that tell you are giving to some charity, to redirects and misdirects: intended on stealing your business from someone else see
http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article.php/2224731

While the press goes to B2C enterprises like amazon and petsmart, the big dollars are spent in B2B transactions.

One of the revolutions of the web was that the gatekeepers of public information—the press (also called the fourth estate)—lost control. Now virtually anyone can virtually compete for space in the public mind. Furthermore the net makes it possible to crosscheck on political and advocacy based claims.

Social: Everything from animal rights to supporting your local zoo is out there on the web. EWG is an award winning site have a look at it. The .org domain is dedicated to social organizations in general.
http://ewg.com
http://www.nrlc.org/
http://www.greenpeace.org
http://edf.org
Quick webilate: go to google.com and click on advanced search (if you clicked on the link it will take you there)

note that you can change the domain type to .org. This can refine your searches to the type of sites you want.

Religious: Just about every religion is out there on the web—even the amish (http://www.amish.net/) well sort of. I will not give a lengthy list here, google will give you as many as you can handle.

The awards: There are lots of web awards out there, but three standout for me. The webbies because it is both a nice set of awards and a truly woman owned and led business, red herring because they look at the business side of the net, and computerworld honors for technical merit. Check them out.