IT Infrastructure I

– The Internet
IIMT2601 Management Information Systems
HKU Business School
The University of Hong Kong

Instructor: Dr. DING Chao

Agenda
• Moore’s Law
• The Internet
 Architecture
 Speed
 A Brief History
 Authorities
• The Basics
 Network Protocols
 IP Address
 Domain Names
 TLD
• IT Infrastructure in HK

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Moore’s Law

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Moore’s Law
• Moore’s Law is an observation made by Gordon Moore
(Intel’s Co-Founder) in 1965.
• It projects that the number of transistors on a chip doubles
about every two years.

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Moore’s Law

Source: Ostendorf A, König K. Tutorial

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Moore’s Law
• Technology progresses at a fast pace that any of us at any
point in time cannot imagine.
• More powerful, cheaper, lighter devices.

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Moore’s Law
• Chipset in your smartphone is the super brain of your
phone.
• It controls everything going on in your smartphone and
ensures it functions correctly.
• Every action you perform on your smartphone goes straight
to the chipset.

Apple’s A-series Huawei’s Kirin 7

Moore’s Law
Largest semiconductor companies (who make chips) ranked by revenue in 2020

Rank Company Sales (USD billions) Headquarters

1 Samsung 208.5 billion Seoul

2 Intel 71.9 billion California

3 SK Hynix 35.27 billion Icheon

4 TSMC 35 billion Taiwan
Micron
5 30.9 billion Idaho
Technology
6 Qualcomm 24.3 billion California
7 Broadcomm 20.85 billion California
Texas
8 14.38 billion Texas
Instruments
9 Toshiba 12.3 billion Tokyo

10 Nvidia 11.72 billion California

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The Internet - Architecture

How do we get online?

Why could we visit oversea websites?

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The Internet - Architecture

Request to open

HKU
Server
Returns HTML file

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The Internet - Architecture

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Source: Global Submarine Cables, http://www.submarinecablemap.com
The Internet - Architecture
• The globe of Internet is connected by fiber optic cables!
• Animated map of submarine cables
• Cable Landing Stations in Hong Kong

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The Internet - Architecture
• Recent incidents
 A 7.1-magnitude earthquake off southwest coast of Taiwan in 2006
disrupted telecommunication services in Hong Kong for seven
weeks
 Massive earthquake and Tsunami in Japan in 2011 damaged half of
the submarine cables running across the Pacific affecting service
providers like PCCW in Hong Kong
 Typhoon Hato caused power and Internet blackout in Macau.
 Volcano in Tonga in 2022 puts the entire country in a complete
darkness because of disruption to the cables.
 Shark Bite

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The Internet - Architecture
• Structure of the Internet

How the Internet works?

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The Internet - Architecture
• ISPs: Internet Service Providers
 Allow individual users to access to the Internet for a fee
 Connect to the Internet via an ISP
• Some ISPs in Hong Kong
 PCCW-HKT Business Services Limited
 Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited
 China Telecom Global Limited
 Orange Business Services Hong Kong Limited

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The Internet - Architecture
• ISPs connect to the Internet through network access points
(NAPs).
• NAPs are
 high-speed routers that form pillars of the Internet
 NAPs + submarine cables = Internet backbone
• The Internet follows a hierarchical structure that is very
similar to the highway system.
 Interstate highways -> city streets -> neighborhood streets
 Ensure everyone (packet) arrives safely at destination

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The Internet - Speed
• Internet speed refers to the speed at which data or content
travels from the World Wide Web to your home computer,
tablet, or smartphone.
• The speed of this data is measured in megabits (1,000,000
bits) per second (Mbps).
• This data transmission rate is the speed of Internet. It is
called the bandwidth.

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The Internet - Speed
• Download speed refers to the rate that digital data is
transferred from the Internet to your computer, while
upload speed is the rate that online data is transferred from
your computer to the Internet.

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The Internet - Speed
• Nielsen's Law of Internet bandwidth states that:
“A high-end user's connection speed grows by 50% per year”

Source: Nielsen Norman Group 19

The Internet - Speed

Winston the pigeon vs Telkom, 2009

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The Internet - A Brief History
• It all happened when United States and Soviet Union were
competing on space technology – the cold war.
• US scientists and military experts were especially concerned
about what might happen in the event of a Soviet attack on
the nation’s telephone system.
• In 1960s, MIT scientist developed a way of sending
information from one computer to another that he called
“packet switching.”
• The research resulted in ARPAnet (Advanced Research
Projects Agency Network.)

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The Internet - A Brief History
• The project is pioneered by U.S. Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA)
• In 1969, ARPAnet delivered its first message: a “node-to-
node” communication from one computer to another. The
message—“LOGIN”—was short and simple, but it crashed
the fledgling ARPA network anyway: The recipient only
received the note’s first two letters.
• In fact, the term Internet is derived from “internetworking”
– connecting computers and networks to form the largest
network ever
• Internet is a world-wide collection of networks that use a
common protocol (a beauty of the Internet) to
communicate with each other
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The Internet - Authorities
• Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
 Works in groups to develop standards
• Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG)
 Approves or disapproves standards developed by the IETF
• Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
 The oversight authority for the standards development process
• Internet Society (ISOC)
 An international professional membership society that helps shape the future of the Internet,
also home of the IETF and IAB
• Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
 Helps manage an Internet Registry (central repository for Internet-related information) and
provides maintenance of the DNS root database
• Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
 Manages IP addresses, domain names, and assigns Internet addresses
 Originally established by NSF as InterNIC in 1993
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
 Promotes the WWW and develops new web technologies and standards

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The Basics – Network Protocols
• Networking standards (protocols) are a format for
transmitting data (packets) that has been agreed to by a
standards organization or industry consortium
• Every party must speak the same language on a network
• It is a set of rules that governs the communications between
computers on a network
 What is allowed to travel?
 How do they travel?
 How are they routed?
 How to make data secure?
 How to en/decrypt data?

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The Basics – Network Protocols
• Some common network protocols:
 Bluetooth protocol
 FTP File Transfer Protocol
 HTTP Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
 HTTPs Secure Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
 SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
 POP post office protocol
 TCP Transmission Control Protocol
 IP Internet Protocol

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The Basics – Network Protocols
• Packet switching
• There is no end-to-end connection between the sender and
the recipient.
• Multiple paths between them.

Source: Information Systems Today by Valacich and Schneider 26

The Basics – Network Protocols

Source: Information Systems Today by Valacich and Schneider

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The Basics – Network Protocols
• The mechanism of Packet switching
 Packet formatting
 Routing – to ensure each packet follows an appropriate route
 Reordering – to ensure receiving device is able to put received
packets back in order
 Collision handling and management

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The Basics – Network Protocols
• Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
 Form packets
 Number packets in order
 Receive packets and reorder them at destination
• Internet Protocol (IP)
 Routing packets to proper destination
 Address

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The Basics – IP Addresses
• Every computer/server connected to the Internet must have
a unique IP address.
• The generic term IP address is also called IPv4.
• Computers use IP addresses to locate and talk to each other
on the Internet, much the same way people use phone
numbers to locate and talk to one another on the
telephone.

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The Basics – IP Addresses
• Format: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx where xxx is a number between 0
and 255.

What might be the problem?

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The Basics – IP Addresses
• When the Internet was first conceived, the architects didn't
foresee the need for an unlimited number of IP addresses.
Consequently, there are not enough IP numbers to go
around.
• To get around that problem, many Internet service providers
limit the number of static IP addresses they allocate, and
economize on the remaining number of IP addresses they
possess by temporarily assigning an IP address from a pool
of IP addresses.
• The temporary IP address is called a dynamic IP address.
• Once the user disconnects from the Internet, their dynamic
IP address goes back into the IP address pool so it can be
assigned to another user.
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The Basics – IP Addresses
• IPv4 was exhausted on 3 Feb, 2011, which gave rise to a new
format.
• IPv6 address size was increased from 32 to 128 bits

Source: Wikipedia
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The Basics – Domain Names
• Numeric IP addresses are hard for us to remember
• Domain names are registered in the domain name system
(DNS), stored by your ISP.
• Domain Name System (DNS)
 A distributed database
 It converts domain names to IP addresses

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The Basics – Domain Names

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The Basics – Domain Names
• The most expensive domain names sold:

Domain name Buyer Price

LasVegas.com Vegas.com US$90 million
Insurance.com Quin Street US$35.6 million
VacationRentals.com HomeAway US$35 million
PrivateJet.com Nations US$30.18 million
Insure.com Quin Street US$16 million
Sex.com Clover Holdings US$14 million
Hotels.com Expedia US$11 million
Fund.com Clek Media US$9.9 million
Porn.com MXN Limited US$ 9.5 million
FB.com Facebook US$8.5 million

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The Basics – Domain Names
• Creative domain names could be very good investment.
• Guess what they are:
 http://www.iphone.com/
 http://abc.xyz/
 http://abc.wtf/
 www.g.cn
 www.z.cn
 http://gs.com
 http://v.me
 http://m.me
• Different domain names could direct to the same site. Just
like a person may have many names.
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The Basics – TLD
• A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the
highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the
Internet.
• Seven most common TLDs: com, edu, gov, int, mil, net, org
 Commercial sector
 Education sector
 Government organizations and departments
 International organizations (e.g. NATO)
 Military sites
 Network providers
 Non-profit organizations (e.g. Green Peace)
• Plus a large number of country/region-specific TLDs.
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The Basics – TLD
• The country-specific TLDs:

au ca ch cn
Australia Canada Switzerland China

fr de jp kr
France Germany Japan Korea

se za
Sweden South Africa

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IT Infrastructure in HK
• An Internet exchange point (IX or IXP) is a physical
infrastructure through which Internet service providers
(ISPs) and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) exchange
Internet traffic between their networks.
• The primary role of an IXP is to keep local Internet traffic
within local infrastructure and to reduce costs associated
with traffic exchange between Internet Service Providers
(ISPs).
• IXP explained
• IXPs global maps

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IT Infrastructure in HK
• Hong Kong Internet eXchange (HKIX) is operated by
Information Technology Services Centre (ITSC) of The
Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).
• There are more than 40 ISPs in this small city, more than 10
of which have their own links to overseas, mainly the United
States.
• The aim of the HKIX is to connect the ISPs in Hong Kong so
that intra-Hong Kong traffic can be exchanged locally
without routing through the US.
• This is one of the reasons why the Internet is super fast in
Hong Kong.

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IT Infrastructure in HK
• Speedtest Global Index 2021

Country/region Broadband Speed (Mbps) Mobile Speed (Mbps)

Singapore 255.83 105.01

Hong Kong SAR, China 254.7 83.58
Switzerland 229.96 135.7
Denmark 227.91 112.03
Thailand 225.17 56.9
France 214.04 86.51
South Korea 212.57 202.61
United States 203.81 110.07
China 196.57 165.38
United Arab Emirates 189.07 238.06
Macau SAR, China 178.9 62.31
Japan 178.76 69.02

Source: SpeedTest 42
IT Infrastructure in HK
• A comparison of global mobile data price.
• It is based on the average price of different mobile data
plans in that region.

Country/region Average price (USD) of 1GB in 2022

South Korea 12.55

Hong Kong SAR, China 1.25
Japan 3.85
Switzerland 7.37
Singapore 0.61
United States 5.62
United Kingdom 0.79
China 0.41

Source: https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/ 43
IT Infrastructure in HK
• The ICT Development Index (IDI) is a composite index combining
11 indicators into one benchmark measure that serves to monitor
and compare developments in information and communication
technology (ICT) across countries/territories.
• The main objectives of the IDI are to measure
 the level and evolution over time of ICT developments in
countries/territories and relative to other countries/territories;
 progress in ICT development in both developed and developing
countries/territories:
 the digital divide, i.e. differences between countries/territories in terms
of their levels of ICT development;
 the development potential of ICTs or the extent to which
countries/territories can make use of ICTs to enhance growth and
development, based on available capabilities and skills.

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IT Infrastructure in HK

The ICT Development Index

Year
Regions
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
South Korea 2 1 2 1 1
Denmark 2 3 4 2 3
UK 4 5 5 4 5
HKSAR, China 9 6 6 9 6
Japan 11 11 10 11 11
USA 15 15 16 15 15
Singapore 19 20 18 19 20
Source: International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

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IT Infrastructure in HK

World class infrastructure

Lightening fast Internet connection
Superb IT development potential
Little to none Internet censorship

but…

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IT Infrastructure in HK

The Hong Kong Science Park

is an infrastructure that
provides a knowledge-based
and campus-like
environment of 220,000
square meters marketed for
high-technology enterprises.

CyberPort was built to serve

as a hub for a constellation
of companies engaged in
high technology, especially
information technology.
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IT Infrastructure in HK
• Major pitching events in HK
• DreamCatchers by HKU
• JumpStarter by Alibaba
• SI CEO Competition for Tertiary Students by the HKSAR
government
• CoCoon Pitch Night by CoCoon

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