Novell Del Mar College
CIS 306 - Managing NOVELL® Networks
 Instructor: Michael P. Harris
Networking Primer

9. Global Networking

To conclude this networking primer, we will go beyond LANs and WANs and briefly discuss the exciting concept of global networking. There are four terms that currently encompass the present and future of global networking: the Internet, the intranet, the extranet, and the Information Superhighway. The Internet and the intranet are the main components of global networking today, and the extranet is rapidly becoming a common component. The Information Superhighway is a concept of what global networking could one day become—the global networking ideal.

The global networking ideal is the simple, powerful idea of people around the world connecting to a network on which they can share ideas, exchange information, and access endless electronic resources. Novell will play a major role in making the global networking ideal a reality. Although the ideal is still some years away, a basic form of global networking, based on the Internet and the intranet, exists today.

The Internet

The Internet is the world's largest computer network. Thousands of local networks belonging to organizations such as government agencies, universities, hospitals, private businesses, and other organizations in countries around the world are attached to the Internet. Millions of users send and receive E-mail, download and upload files, do research, and conduct business on the Internet daily.

The Internet is a global network, but in many ways, it does not currently meet the global networking ideal. From a business standpoint, for example, the Internet has several disadvantages. First, the Internet uses packet-switching, so you can never be sure what route a packet will take or how long it will take to arrive. Second, because no one owns the Internet, no one is responsible for ensuring that the network as a whole is functioning properly (or has the authority to require that it is). Third, while improvements have been made, security on the Internet is still a problem. Fourth, the Internet does not offer the fastest data transfer rates available.

Intranets

An intranet is a privately owned, secure, business network that is based on Internet technology.

The term "intranet" sprang up virtually overnight when companies discovered that they could use publicly available Internet technologies to make useful information immediately available to all employees, no matter where the employees were located; that they could still secure the information from unwanted access; and that, along with these other advantages, they could also make the information available at the lowest possible cost.

On a typical intranet, there is a World Wide Web (WWW) server, on which information is published in an electronic format called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Workstations have some type of client software, most often a Web browser, through which they can access any information published (in HTML format) on any Web server. Users of client stations can be given different rights so that they can access only selected information on selected Web servers.

The main reason for a company to implement an intranet is that an intranet enables a business to collect, manage, and disseminate information more quickly and easily than ever before, even much more quickly and inexpensively than with other current means of electronic communications, including E-mail and other types of cross-platform publishing. In fact, intranet publishing is the ultimate in cross-platform publishing because it is based on the Internet technologies that were developed specifically for the purpose of allowing information sharing among dissimilar computing systems.

While even a small company with only one office and a small network can benefit from an intranet, the value of an intranet increases with the number of employees, the size of the network, and the number of geographically separate sites. The reason is that as a company grows, if the company continues to use conventional means of information dissemination, such as printed memoranda and newsletters, the cost of disseminating information to all employees increases exponentially. And other methods of sharing information, such as E-mail and file sharing, also fall short of the cost savings and immediacy that can be obtained through intranet publishing.

On an intranet, any employee with a properly configured workstation and a Web browser can read documents as soon as the files are completed and copied to any Web server, regardless of where the employee is located. If a company were to instead disseminate documents as files in a public directory or by E-mail, the documents would have to be provided in multiple formats to accommodate the various computing platforms and applications used within the company. There would need to be people dedicated to the task of preparing the differently formatted documents and disseminating them to different locations where they could be accessed. In even a small company, this type of effort takes significantly more time and costs far more than does publishing the same information once, in HTML format, on a single Web server. In a large company, the time and cost differences can be enormous.

Intranet publishing has other advantages. One important advantage is that the network can update your intranet documents automatically, in real time. For example, if you published a document that contained the stock price for your company or news about the market in which your company competes, you could create a Web server script that would automatically update the document every 15 minutes with the most current stock price and market news. With immediate access to up-to-date information, employees can respond more quickly to changes in the marketplace (with the result of increased profits). Also, after the script is created, the network continues to update the information—the work isn't forgotten or ignored because employees are too busy—and there is no further cost.

In addition, you can get immediate feedback about the documents published on your intranet. For example, with paper-based documents or publicly available files stored on a server, you cannot determine whether or not people are reading the documents. If you published the documents on an intranet server, however, the network could track how many people read the documents and which documents were used the most.

Businesses are continually finding more ways to use intranets to decrease costs, especially since the specification for World Wide Web documents has been extended to include graphics, audio clips, and movies. For example, many companies have installed applications that allow employees to access company databases directly from a Web browser, thus avoiding the cost of specialized database access programs. Recent products such as Novell's GroupWise WebAccess even allow employees to read their E-mail messages and schedules directly from a Web browser.

Another factor that makes any intranet valuable is that after it is built, it can be connected to the Internet with very little extra effort. Remote users, such as traveling employees, suppliers, and customers, can then access your intranet documents over the Internet. You can control access to your intranet documents, allowing the general public to view some documents and allowing only authorized users to view others. Furthermore, you can allow employees to connect to the Internet and access a vast pool of information that covers nearly every topic imaginable.

Of course, intranets need not be connected to the Internet: An intranet may be only local, or, if it is a WAN intranet, the various locations might be connected by means other than the Internet. However, many intranets are now connected to the Internet, and in the future many more will be. The most important reason is that the Internet is a ready-made, low-cost WAN backbone. And, as mentioned above, if your intranet is connected to the Internet, all users can easily and speedily access the wealth of information available there.

Extranets

An extranet is two or more intranets connected in such a way that they enable collaboration among the businesses that own the separate intranets.

On an extranet, each connected company usually makes some selected part of its intranet accessible to the employees of one or more of the other companies. For example, several companies might create an extranet to consolidate data gathering and share data, or to jointly develop and share training programs and other material, or to coordinate project management for a common work project. On an extranet, each company uses the security inherent in its own intranet to the keep employees of other companies from accessing information they do not need to see.

The collaborative business application is a powerful extranet tool. Such applications, possibly developed jointly by participating companies, enable the employees of the different companies to work together very effectively without leaving their offices (which might be located in different places all over the world).

For example, a consumer company might work with a supply company to connect their intranets and create a supply ordering system, to allow all employees of the consumer company to order whatever supplies they needed, whenever they needed, directly from the supply company. A consumer company employee might order by using his or her Web browser to look through one or more electronic catalogs that the supply company published on the extranet. The employee might check a box next to each of the items he or she needed. Different employees might be given different rights to different catalogs so that they could see and order only from selected parts of a catalog. Also, different employees might be allowed to see different items in each part. Underlying parts of the collaborative business application could sort all ordered items by company division, group, and employee and fill out one daily purchase requisition containing all items ordered by all employees. Each purchase requisition could be immediately delivered over the extranet. For the supply company, the application could automatically generate a shipping ticket that contained the items to be shipped, broken down by division, group, and the person each item was to be delivered to.

For the consumer company, the end result might be to eliminate the need to stock any supplies and to considerably reduce purchasing costs. The consumer company employees might be able to get any supplies they needed in less time than ever before. And the supply company might be able to sell more supplies and deliver them faster than before, with less staff than before.

Because almost all intranets and extranets will eventually be connected to the Internet, intranet technology should be designed to deal as effectively as possible with the security problems and other problems inherent to the Internet.

The Information Superhighway

The terms "Internet" and "Information Superhighway" are sometimes used synonymously, but they are not the same thing. The term Information Superhighway describes the global networking ideal, which the Internet is not.

The ideal global network, or Information Superhighway, will include a vastly improved Internet and many other networks, services, and technologies. The Information Superhighway will be pervasive: Low-cost access will be available to virtually everyone worldwide. The Information Superhighway will provide homes, businesses, and other organizations with a myriad of services, such as on-demand video, E-mail, electronic commerce, shopping, research, video conferencing, and voting services. In sum, the Information Superhighway will provide literally every digitally deliverable service to everyone on the globe.

Presently, the Information Superhighway is only a concept, but governments, businesses, and public institutions worldwide are taking steps to make the Information Superhighway a reality.

Novell contributes to the growth of the Information Superhighway with all of its offerings, from core infrastructure and services such as the IntranetWare and NetWare 4.11 operating systems; to advanced services such as Novell Directory Services™, Novell Connect Services™, NetWare Telephony Services™, and the Novell Web Server 3.0; to Internet and intranet access products such as the LAN WorkPlace® and LAN WorkGroup™ family of products; to advanced groupware and intranet applications such as GroupWise 5.1 and GroupWise WebAccess.

We hope this primer has been helpful to you. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Happy networking!

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