This topic needs clarification. For example, if one takes the term "Retail Internet Sites" to be the subject of the industry, the analysis would go askew for the very simple fact that a "Retail Internet Site" is nothing more than a "domain name," -- http://www.mystore.com -- which is referred to as a "retail site." If that is the topic, then the industry analysis would be slender, since there is only one company, InterNIC.net that has the franchise in the United States to register domain names.
If the topic is construed to be a consideration of retail sites on the Internet, then the opposite is true. Instead of a slender industry analysis, this analysis would reach many hundreds of thousands of pages. For the purpose of this analysis, "Retail Internet Sites" will be considered as a web location that has been registered with InterNIC, and that is in the process of going into business -- or is already in business -- on the World Wide Web.
This paper shall not cover the several hundred thousand companies around the world that specialize in helping companies improve their web presence, primarily because of the fact that those companies are basically uncoordinated by Federal regulations. What this paper will focus on is one particular group of businesses within the Internet that can be considered to form an "industry segment," the Internet Service Provider, or ISP.
An ISP is a company that is in the business of renting cyberspace to web domains that wish to perform business on the Internet. Most large companies do not use ISPs since they find it cheaper and more secure to provide their own "servers" (which consist of a computer and software.) With this warning out of the way, this analysis will now proceed with an overview of the ISP Industry.
The ISP Industry, just like the World Wide Web, didn't really begin until 1994, when Netscape Corporation introduced its mosaic browser, which enabled computer users to li...