Network Infrastructure Design for E-commerce Business, Thesis of Computer Networks

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Table of Contents

• Section 1: Target Organization........................................................................................................
• Section 2: Network Requirements...................................................................................................
• Section 3: Internal Network Design..............................................................................................
• Section 4: Internet Infrastructure...................................................................................................
• Section 5: Network Implementation..............................................................................................
• Section 6: Network Management..................................................................................................
• Section 7: Network Pro Prep Toolkit.............................................................................................
• References......................................................................................................................................

expanded staff in both IT and customer service if the correct hardware and software are chosen and the current software and hardware are upgraded to industry standards rather than being stuck in the 1990s. As far as e-commerce goes, with the plan being an online casino that mirrors the physical casino, the network requirements would be more intense, especially with security and bandwidth, and would beg for more upgraded hardware and state-of-the-art software than what the casino is currently running.

Section 2: Network Requirements There are many lists of requirements for an e-commerce business, such as brand identity, user-friendly design, mobile-friendly websites, marketing support, streamlined payments, solid customer service, content management, user-generated reviews, social media and email marketing. (The Intact One, 2020) Other important requirements include space and a niche, a business names/EINs/business permits, the source to develop e-commerce from, numerous payment methods, transaction systems in place, a strong supply chain, a focus on return customers, compatibility with all devices, multilingual support, and website security and protection. (Ansary, 2019) Digging deeper, one of the first and most important requirements of an e-commerce business is a solid telecommunication infrastructure. Both bandwidth and security are critical in ensuring a successful online business. It is also necessary to obtain enough server space for the requirements. The need for bandwidth can be fluid, but since we’re discussing an online casino that would possibly service hundreds of thousands of people online, I would go with a large amount of bandwidth. It is also important to have firewalls and encryption/algorithm processes in place for e-commerce security. (Ansary, 2019) It is also important to make sure that there is a form of security mark on the website to assure guests that their information is safe in the hands of the business and not vulnerable to hackers and other malicious internet entities. According to Ahemed Ansary, “Statistic(s) reported that 17% of customers abandoned online shopping carts due to concerns about payment protection. Strong assurance for tired buyers to post a security and certification symbol from respected third-party security agencies. (Ansary, 2019)” It is also good practice to have video available for viewing of the products, as well as genuine buyer reviews to help build trust

catching and responsive web design. Another aspect is to continually run promotions to keep guests engaged, such as running specials on web banners or using widgets to let people know what specialty the online casino is running for the day/week/month/year. It is also important to ensure that your exchange of currency is sound and secure, the exchange between winnings and losses crystal clear and able to be notated for both tax purposes and to keep the customers happy and ensure them we are playing a legitimate game. On that same note, it is critical to have visible contact information and an open inbox for any complaints or suggestions moving forward. “KoMarketing‘s report says that 44% of the website visitors will leave an organization’s website if there is (not) any contact information or phone number. (Ansary, 2019)” It is critical as well to consider capacity and e-commerce metrics when expanding a business into e-commerce. “E-commerce metrics measure the sales and business processes of a company that sells products online. (Caldwell, 2021)” This would be tracking things such as how many hits the website is getting per day, or the value of how much each customer is spending and winning on the online casino per day. These numbers will give us insight into the overall performance of the online casino and whether there is a profit being made since all casinos have the “edge of the house” one-up and online casinos are no different. (Admin, 2022) They also ascertain whether the business is on an uptick or a downward trajectory. It also gives insight into whether the strategies in place are working and influencing future decisions and plans. (Caldwell, 2021) There are general e-commerce metrics, and then there are more specific key performance indicators, or KPIs, that are a specific category of metrics that management has ascertained will provide important insight into the business and they’ve decided it is something to monitor for the health of the business. “A business should track KPIs that are in alignment

with its business goals. (Caldwell, 2021)” It is important to track metrics at different times for different reasons. Weekly metrics can be used to assess website traffic, social media reach, and views of digital ads. Biweekly metrics would measure the average payout value, and the cost per acquisition of new customer. Monthly it would be good practice to measure the reach of marketing emails and ascertain the percentage of customers who bought in and continued to play inside the online casino environment. Quarterly, I would assess the total amount the company earned from a customer over the long-term, specifically customer lifetime value. There are at least fourteen fundamental e-commerce metrics that need to be monitored for success, but I will focus on a few. One of the most important metrics is the sales conversion rate (total transactions / total visits x 100), and it is so important because any small lift can make a huge difference in the overall business. It is important to filter conversion rates by specific traffic sources or paths to see where the pros and cons are, and where the most need for improvement is. “You might monitor the conversion rate for a certain category of products to see if they’re worth spending extra marketing resources to drive more category page traffic. (Caldwell, 2021)” By the same token, it is also important to measure the customer retention rate, which is measured by “(Customers at end of a time period – Customers acquired during the period) / Customers at beginning of period x 100” says Austin Caldwell of Oracle NetSuite, and business can improve their customer retention rate by improving customer service, creating incentives and loyalty programs, and offering discounts, or in the case of an online casino, free spins in hopes of winning more money. Website traffic is another metric that is critical to measure and keep tabs on. Especially if you are paying for advertisements, it is important to keep track of how long the average visitor, whether it’s a potential customer or a long-term one, spends on the site, and to ascertain what

without many resolutions, but customer support incorporates customer experience into the overall business strategy. (Foster, 2022) The customer support team is the first line of communication between the business and the guests, and it is necessary to establish trust when dealing with experience or service issues or if they have a question. “Customer support representatives have all the knowledge and training necessary to satisfy customer needs and resolve customer complaints. (Foster, 2022)” The job of customer support representative is demanding: technologically savvy, happy salespeople, and brand ambassadors, all at the same time. It is necessary for customer support reps to have good communication skills and a customer-centric mindset. They should be a quick learner who is adept at learning from software and have knowledge of how a point-of-sale system works, as well as data entry, and general customer service procedures. “Agents will need to get comfortable with your help desk, along with any backend, CRM, or e-commerce platforms you use. A platform like Groove offers quick set up and easy onboarding. (Foster, 2022)” They are expected to learn or already know how to use tools such as helpdesk software (email inbox, knowledge base, and live chat functions), customer relationship management (CRM) tools, Excel, Google Drive, and e-commerce platforms such as Shopify. There are helpdesk tools that combine all these tools together, integrating your store and CRM into one inbox that can reference customer data, history, and purchase history all while on the phone or on a chat with the customer. There are other integrations that can even offer refunds and edit shipping and payment information without even leaving the platform. (Foster, 2022) As a business, I would absolutely invest in this kind of helpdesk program for my support staff, and the website that I have been referencing is for the helpdesk software Groove. It would be critical to hire a team that supports the culture the business is trying to build, train agents on all software to

set them up for success, use tools that are intuitive, decide which channels to offer customer support to (such as live chat, email, social media), and create a core philosophy. (Foster, 2022) I believe I would double my support staff with my social media team, as they have access to similar information. That way, they can be versed in both customer support and in social media. A good requirement for a customer support representative is knowledge of the online customer base, live chats, email, and social media messages, so it would be a simple crossover for support staff to also work in social media. It is also good practice to ensure that your support and social media teams are respectful, patient, personable, empathetic, and responsive. (Foster, 2022) This would account for salespeople, social media employees, and customer service and support. The system administrator would need to be able to maintain and upgrade hardware including hard drives, motherboards, processors, servers, and switches. They would also need to have skills to install and compile the software listed above (Apache, Java Servlet, and MySQL engines, at the very least). This would require a developer and a programmer as well, preferably with a decent amount of industry experience and a clear understanding of e-commerce. The developer and/or programmer would need to understand the flow of information from one end to the other and would be required to have the skills to program C, PHP, Java, and/or MySQL. (Ansary, 2019) With this thought in mind, I might hire a brand manager, but that would depend entirely on the effectiveness of the customer support and social media teams, so I would hold off on this for now.

offers improved fault tolerance and can be implemented in minor variations by implementing more than one concentrator router and manipulating the way in which they are connected. Having multiple routers interconnected asks the network designer to select a sub-topology for the second tier. These topologies can be fully meshed, partially meshed, or strung together peer-to- peer. (Richardson, 2022) As this is an expensive undertaking, I would observe how the single router handles the traffic of the company’s networking before committing to a two- tiered topology. Depending on the benefits and the load of the e-commerce casino on the company’s network, I would indeed add a second router to handle the increased traffic from the end-users. The two-tiered topology for the network would look a little like the figure above if the Admin and Protocol/Server and Router room from the above diagram would be expanded. I do feel like the above diagrams answer the question of what key hardware and software elements would be needed to implement the internal network I’m planning to build, but I will expand on it anyway. Naturally, the most important elements of any network are hardware, software, and nodes. Hardware is the physical component of the network, such as switches, routers, cables, and servers. Software components are the programs and/or applications that run on the network, such

as operating systems, antivirus software, and networking tools. (DevGeon, 2021) The next components are called nodes. “Computer networks use nodes to transfer information. Nodes are typically devices like servers, routers, and switches - but they can also be people. (DevGeon, 2021)” Nodes are often called the “point of presence” or a waystation within a network and are generally classified as wired, wireless, mobile, or app specific. The more nodes that are in a network, the greater potential it has for good coverage and increased speed. Switches are used to connect devices in a network and “work by reading data from the address of a packet and forwarding it onto the next device in the network. (DevGeon, 2021)” The switch segments and isolate different parts of the network and allow data to be transmitted between different devices on the network. It also enables computers to communicate effectively with each other. Access layer switches are the switches that are most often used now. “These switches will help you control your network traffic and provide better functionality for your company's needs. (DevGeon, 2021)” Switches can operate at two different layers in the OSI model. A layer 2 switch operates at the data link layer and manages communication between devices on a single network, while a layer 3 switch operates at the networking layer which manages communication between different LAN segments across the internetwork. “A computer network router is a device that manages network traffic by forwarding data packets between computer networks. (DevGeon, 2021)” Every single data packet generated by a network is read by the router, and then either sent to its end destination or dropped if there is no end destination specified. No matter how big or small a network is, at least one router is necessary as every single piece of information is transmitted through one or more routers. (DevGeon, 2021) Routers are typically used to connect devices together in a single building,

security numbers of your consumers, from people who would use it for their own malicious intent. A firewall has three elements: stateful inspection, packet-filtering, and proxy access control. There are three types of firewalls: packet filters, proxy servers, and circuit level gateway. Packet filters use rules to define which packets of data should be permitted to get past the firewall. Proxy servers act as a mediator between two separate locations on the network. Circuit- level gateways filter out undesired traffic on both sides of the connection. Another aspect of a network is access points. These are devices that grant permission to communicate with other computers on the same LAN. “In order to access the internet, your device must be able to connect with a computer network access point or Wi-Fi hotspot. (DevGeon, 2021)” The connections for the network access points are often set up by Internet Service Providers, businesses, or even schools. These access points allow laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other devices to connect to the internet through wireless connectivity. Some businesses have public Wi-Fi, and these access points are what grant access to those public networks. Another aspect of network infrastructure is a bridge, which is used to connect two networks of similar type, allowing different networks to coexist and share resources without allowing one network to have control over the other. Load balancers are also used to receive and forward messages from customers and clients to the business’s servers. A network interface card (NIC) is critical to a computer network as well, in that it is the hardware device that allows a computer to connect to a network. It detects and transmits data packets over physical media or the network it’s linked to. It can be combined with a WAN adapter and a modem, and it can also act as an Ethernet adapter to connect computers to the LAN with an Ethernet cable.

Ethernet cables are essentially the backbone of any network, as most of these components listed above are connected by cables. The most popular of the Ethernet cables is the Cat5e cable, because it can support Gigabit speeds and still be cost-effective. (Williams, 2022) For my business, I would choose Category 8 cables, because they are designed for operations up to 2000 MHz. “CAT8 cables work with 25/40GBASE-T Gigabit Ethernet; this reduces power consumption and is designed for bandwidth-intensive data center applications. (Williams, 2022)” Because there will be a lot of information coming from both the gaming software and the e- commerce casino, I feel the high bandwidth offered by the Cat8 cables would be the most effective for my business, especially since it is backward-compatible with all the previous categories of ethernet cables. Protocols are also extremely important when it comes to building a network. A DNS Protocol, which assists internet users and network devices in discovering websites using readable hostnames, rather than the usual numeric IP addresses, is extremely critical to any network. (NS1, 2018) Other critical protocols include the TDP/IP protocol (or the Internet Protocol Suite), the HTTPS protocol, and the POP3/SMTP protocols. There are also critical standards of procedures (or SOP) that need to be implemented. The SOP lays out definitions of the protocols that are going to be implemented and the responsibility each user has for the installation and implementation. (GMP DOCS, 2022) For the security protocol, I would absolutely implement the Kerberos Protocol, which is a network authentication protocol designed to provide strong authentication for the client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography. (MIT, 2019) For software, as everything is already integrated into the current gaming software of CasinoTrac, I would likely keep it. CasinoTrac tracks all the money coming in and out of the

Section 4: Internet Infrastructure The entire concept of Internet functionality can be boiled down to one thing: it’s the connection that makes information available at your fingertips. It connects all data flow and information into one network for an organization. (Team, 2021) To achieve this, there must be a few different building blocks. Infrastructure is by far the most critical aspect of Internet functionality because it is what allows the connection to be facilitated in the first place. Consumer function is another building block, because the Internet is there to be connected to so that an organization can build a bridge between the business and the clients they help. Military, agricultural and industrial organizations are benefitting from the increased organization and improved manufacturing that comes from the connection to the Internet. Lastly, the internet has helped increase organization in both everyday life and business life. Communication has gotten much easier and more accessible, and digitalization has created a more efficient world altogether. (Team, 2021) There are six major features of the Internet: the world wide web, email, news, telnet, file transfer protocol (FTP), and instant relay chat (IRC). The world wide web is an aspect of the internet that supports hypertext documents and allows users to view and navigate data. It does this by reading an encoded web page with hypertext markup language (HTTP) tags, and every web page has a uniform resource locator, or a URL. Email is the leading reason people use the internet because it is made simple to create, send, and receive email if you have an email program and account on an Internet mail server with a domain name, as well as a created email address. News is critical for discussions and study of specific topics. To partake in a newsgroup, it's critical to have a news-reader program installed that is compatible with the news server. “Telnet is a specialized service that lets you use one computer to access the contents of another

computer a telnet host. (Assignment Point, 2022)” This program creates a window into the host to grant access to files, issue commands, and exchange data. This is generally used by libraries. The FTP protocol is an internet tool utilized to copy files from one workstation to another. Using a specialized FTP web browser or program, it is simple to log into an ETP host computer over the internet to copy files onto you own workstation. IRC is a service that allows users to keep in contact with each other in real time by typing text into a specified window. Much like news above, there are numerous specialized IRC channels dedicated to a subject or demographic. (Assignment Point, 2022) For the infrastructure of our network, there are many aspects to consider when designing the project that was laid out in the plan phase. The network design should contain, at the very least, seven elements. The first is routing and switching components for connectivity. The second is wide area network (WAN) connectivity for both intra- and inter-network sites. Third is software applications and configurations for the routers and switched. Fourth, of course, is sufficient power and environment. The fifth element is security, the sixth is redundancy and failover, and the final one is critical disaster recovery. (Cisco, 2008) Before beginning to implement the infrastructure, it is critical to ensure that you are equipped with business and system requirements, service-level agreements (SLAs), capacity and bandwidth requirements, and site survey and proposal from the project’s plan. The deliverables for the design of the infrastructure should be a network diagram (seen below), routing strategy, call and traffic flow, and redundancy, as well as a list of necessary equipment and a bill of materials for the company to obtain. (Cisco, 2008)