How Internet EDI Works

Internet EDI (EDI-INT) consists of three established standards to securely transport EDI documents over the Internet. The Internet EDI standards are AS1, AS2 and AS3. The AS1 standard is a way to securely transport EDI documents over the Internet via SMTP (email). The AS2 standard is a way to securely transport EDI and XML documents over the Internet via HTTP (literally sending a document over the Internet rather than emailing the document over the Internet). The AS3 standard is a way to securely transport EDI and XML documents over the Internet via File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

The primary principle behind the AS1, AS2 and AS3 standards pertain to security and how to securely transport data via the Internet. The four primary points are:

• Privacy provides message content privacy via data encryption (the document can only be viewed by the sender/receiver).
• Authentication is achieved via the sender's digital signature to ensure that the sender is actually who they claim to be.
• Integrity is achieved through the use of hash totals that are enclosed in Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs) to ensure that the document cannot be altered without the receiver detecting a change.
• Non-repudiation is ensured through a signed MDN receipt that the receiver sends back to the sender, ensuring that the receiver cannot claim they did not receive the document.

With increased business dependency on the Internet and solutions that were built to run on it, dis-intermediation became the rallying cry for many technology-savvy companies. Thought leaders now understood that with a free Internet and value-based software, there were tremendous savings to be gained by switching from "value-added services" to easy-to-use, highly cost-effective Internet EDI (EDI-INT) solutions.

Here is a breakdown of the advantages Internet EDI has over VAN EDI:

• Low-cost
• Zero transaction fees
• Easy to use
• Minimal infrastructure
• Industry standard
• Real time
• Entire supply chain
• All data transport
• Web browser

Next: Industry leaders using EDI »