Q1:

(a) (i) An advantage of e-commerce facility is that customers can order their required product from home round the clock without having the trouble of going to the shops. Moreover, the customers can get access to a lot of shops on the web and can make use of price comparison services to find the cheapest product.

A disadvantage of e-commerce could be that customers may be misled by showing a product of higher quality than actual on the web through deceiving pictures etc. Therefore, customers may end up in paying a higher price for a low quality product. Moreover, there is a chance of fraud such as false web sites which will receive the money from the customers and will not deliver the product.

(ii) An advantage for the book shop management is that they could access a wider market through web than before because they could sell and deliver their products to even those customers who live in far flung areas and cannot physically visit the shop. Therefore, the sales volume would increase. Moreover, the book shop could cut on its operational costs incurred on the maintenance of the shop and salary of shop workers because now lesser number f workers would needed to be hired.

A disadvantage of the e-commerce would be that the web site would be under constant threat of an attack by the hackers which could result in heavy financial losses as well as a loss in credibility and reliability of the business’s web site. Moreover, there is always a lack of personal touch with the customers in e-commerce, which could result in decreased customer loyalty.

(b) Encryption is a security technique by which data is converted into a coded language and apparently seems meaningless. Encrypted data is used to send over secret or confidential information such as passwords, bank account details etc. so that no one can succeed in tapping the data. Even if a hacker gets access to the encrypted data, he would not be able to understand it. After transmission, the data is again decoded into unencrypted one.

Q2:

(a) Star topology is advantageous in terms that it prevents the flow of data through a large number of nodes. Therefore, the network would show a better performance. Moreover, the management of the network in terms of increasing its size and analysis of traffic and

Better performance: star topology prevents the passing of data packets through an excessive number of nodes. At most, 3 devices and 2 links are involved in any communication between any two devices. Although this topology places a huge overhead on the central hub, with adequate capacity, the hub can handle very high utilization by one device without affecting others.

Isolation of devices: Each device is inherently isolated by the link that connects it to the hub. This makes the isolation of individual devices straightforward and amounts to disconnecting each device from the others. This isolation also prevents any non-centralized failure from affecting the network.

Benefits from centralization: As the central hub is the bottleneck, increasing its capacity, or connecting additional devices to it, increases the size of the network very easily. Centralization also allows the inspection of traffic through the network. This facilitates analysis of the traffic and detection of suspicious behavior.

Easy to detect faults and to remove parts.

No disruptions to the network when connecting or removing devices.

[edit] Disadvantages

High dependence of the system on the functioning of the central hub Failure of the central hub renders the network inoperable