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The present Internet is used to support a diversity of application types, each with different performance expectations. Latency is a fundamental component that affects end-user's Internet experience. Many applications can benefit from reduced latency. The thesis examines the startup latency of the Standard Transmission Control Protocol (TCP Reno) congestion control algorithm when used for short-lived interactive applications. TCP plays a key role in preventing Internet failure by decreasing network utilization when it detects packet drops or receives explicit congestion signals. TCP Reno senders react to congestion by reducing their rate by approximately half. When a flow has recently started, TCP Reno has no way to determine the available capacity, and uses a conservative startup method that can result in high latency for short-lived interactive applications with only a small amount of data to send. This is especially so when there is loss of the connection setup packet before a flow starts. This thesis therefore proposes a new algorithm called TCP SYN Loss (TSL) Startup Algorithm that uses a halving congestion response function during startup, which is less conservative than the current method. After connection setup is completed, standard TCP congestion control is applied for the data transfer phase. The new method is shown to significantly reduce web response time by increasing TCP Reno robustness against startup loss. Startup latency also affects users who rely on broadband satellite for Internet access. Application performance is impacted by the delay of bandwidth-on-demand (BoD) multiple access control (MAC) protocol at the start of a TCP flow when there are no prior capacity assignments. This thesis proposes a new method that combines Random Access (RA) and BoD to reduce web response time and startup delay of media streaming over satellite. Furthermore, a modified algorithm called the Split RADAMA protocol was designed to avoid the negative transport effects when switching between RA and BoD transmissions e.g. packet reordering and spurious retransmission. Together the proposed methods can significantly improve web experience for a wide range of end-users by reducing the response time for short-lived interactive applications.

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / The Banking industry globally provides Internet banking in order to offer their customers easy access to banking services. In South Africa, the banking industry has developed into a mature sector that is well managed and uses most advanced risk-management systems in conducting business. The banks in South Africa, like their counter parts in other parts of the world offer Internet banking to customers. However, the majority of South Africans in rural areas do not adopt and use Internet banking despite its convenience, the availability of Internet banking Infrastructure, the effort of banks in promoting Internet banking awareness and Internet security. This research investigated factors which influence the adoption and use of Internet banking in the context of South African rural areas.

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Most Web search tools integrate sponsored results with results from their internal editorial database in providing results to users. The goal of this research is to get a better idea of how much of the screen real estate displays â realâ editorial results as compared to sponsored results. The overall average results are that 40% of all results presented on the first screen are â realâ results, and when the entire first Web page is considered, 67% of the results are non-sponsored results. For general search tools like Google, 56% of the first screen and 82% of the first Web page contain non-sponsored results. Other results include that query structure makes a significant difference in the percentage of non-sponsored results returned by a search. Similarly, the topic of the query can also have a significant effect on the percentage of sponsored results displayed by most Web search tools.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / Research was focused on discovering whether two of the algorithms the research group has developed can help improve browsing and/or searching the Internet. Results indicate that a Kohonen self-organizing map (SOM)-based algorithm can successfully categorize a large and eclectic Internet information space into managable sub-spaces that users can successfully navigate to locate a homepage of interest to them.

Also published in Journal of Internet Cataloging, 2(3/4), 9-28, 2000 / Ambiguities in Web search tool (more commonly known as "search engine") terminology are problematic when conducting precise, replicable research or when teaching others to use search tools. Standardized terminology would enable Web searchers to be aware of subtle differences between Web search tools and the implications of these for searching. A categorization and nomenclature for standardized classifications of different aspects of Web search tools is proposed, and advantages and disadvantages of using tools in each category are discussed.