| > | | | | increasing number of people in corporations use |
| Intranets | | | | the Internet for communicating with the outside |
| What exactly is an intranet? It's one of those | | | | world, for gathering information, and for doing |
| terms that's more thrown around than | | | | business. It didn't take long for people to |
| understood, and has become more of a | | | | recognize that the components that worked so |
| buzzword than a commonly understood idea. | | | | well on the Internet could be equally valuable |
| Simply put, an intranet is a private network with | | | | internally and that is why intranets are becoming |
| Internet technology used as the underlying | | | | so popular. Some corporations do not have TCP |
| architecture. An intranet is built using the Internet's | | | | IP networks, the protocol required to access the |
| TCP/IP protocols for communications. TCP/IP | | | | resources of the Internet. Creating an intranet in |
| protocols can be run on many hardware | | | | which all the information and resources can be |
| platforms and cabling schemes. The underlying | | | | used seamlessly has many benefits. TCP/IP-based |
| hardware is not what makes an intranet-it's the | | | | networks make it easy for people to access the |
| software protocols that matter. | | | | network remotely, such as from home or while |
| Intranets can co-exist with other local area | | | | traveling. Dialing into an intranet in this way is |
| networking technology. In many companies, | | | | much like connecting to the Internet, except that |
| existing "legacy systems" including mainframes, | | | | you're connecting to a private network instead of |
| Novell networks, minicomputers, and various | | | | to a public Internet provider. Interoperability |
| databases, are being integrated into an intranet. A | | | | between networks is another substantial bonus. |
| wide variety of tools allow this to happen. | | | | Security systems separate an intranet from the |
| Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripting is | | | | Internet. A company's intranet is protected by |
| often used to access legacy databases from an | | | | firewalls-hardware and software combinations that |
| intranet. The Java programming language can be | | | | allow only certain people to access the intranet |
| used to access legacy databases as well. | | | | for specific purposes. |
| With the enormous growth of the Internet, an | | | | |