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An intranet is usually described as an internal or restricted access network that is similar
to functionality as the internet, but is only available to an organization internally. For
instance if your organization would like to share specific information such as documents,
any current announcements, new product details etc, but only allow those computers in
the organization access to this information, you would use an intranet.
In order to have an intranet, the
computers in the network do not have to have a normal internet connection. However,
since most organization have both an intranet and internet access (sometimes called
extranet), the organization will provide a gateway such as a firewall, along with other
types of ways to identify the user such as authentication or encryption data or the use of
VPN (virtual private networks ). With these added provisions, individuals with clearance
to access the intranet from outside sources, using the internet can. For instance an off site
employee can have access to the intranet and be able to download specific reports or data.
Advantages of an Intranet
Intranets can enhance the productivity at an organization. They can be used for many
things dealing with communication. For instance, intranets can be helpful to
organizations large and small, by giving it the ability to use intranets as delivery
mechanisms for applications, drivers and collaborative projects.
An intranet can also help associates find data quickly and easy through a browser
interface. For instance, your organization might have medical insurance information on
the intranet, which workers can easily navigate and access. This can reduce the amount of
time that it takes to contact an individual at the HR Dept.. Instead, information is at the
fingertips of all associates. Another great way intranets can enhance productivity is that
information is available when a worker needs it, not just when people with the
information send it out via email.
Disadvantages of an Intranet
While for the most, an intranet is very advantageous to any organization, there are a few
downsides including the fact that management does need to give up control of specific
information. While usually this problem can be minimized with proper foresight,
problems do occur.
Security issues might be another disadvantage with an intranet. For instance, an employee
might have posted sensitive information for all employees to see. Another issue might be
the fact that there is too much information. Information overload does exist and can take
place when too much data is up on the intranet. This makes it very difficult for employees
to navigate and find data that is meaningful or that they need.
What a difference four letters make! Intranet isn't just a misspelling of Internet.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the prefix "intra-" is Latin for
"within." Which makes sense because an intranet works exactly like the Internet, except
it's a network confined within a company, school, government or organization.
Image courtesy of National Parks Service
Employees can access confidential information via an organization's
intranet.
For example, HowStuffWorks.com is a Web site hosted by a Web server connected to the
Internet. Anyone in the world with Internet access can visit HowStuffWorks.com and
read articles like this one.
Let's pretend that the employees of HowStuffWorks use another Web site called
HSWIntranet.com to post events on a community calendar, read messages from founder
Marshall Brain and access the company phone directory. HSWIntranet is hosted on a
Web server located in the HowStuffWorks headquarters in Atlanta and is connected only
to the company's local area network (LAN). Only employees connected to the LAN via a
special network password can access the company intranet. HSWIntranet.com isn't an
Internet site; it's an intranet site.
Both the Internet and an intranet operate over a communications standard called TCP/IP
(transmission control protocol/Internet protocol) that connects hosts to users over a
network. Both the Internet and an intranet use Web pages to display information on users'
computers. Therefore, they both use Web programming languages like HTML, Java,
Flash and XML to build Web pages with text, images, audio and video.
Some companies and organizations allow business partners and clients to access their
intranet sites from remote locations outside of the company LAN. These extensions of the
intranet are called extranets.
In this HowStuffWorks article, we'll go over the chief advantages of using an intranet,
particularly for small and large businesses. Then we'll explain how to plan and develop
an intranet. And finally we'll provide the technical specs for setting up an intranet.
Let's start with the advantages of using an intranet.
Intranet Benefits
The chief advantage of using an intranet for a small or large business is that they're cheap
to implement and run, greatly increasing the return on investment (ROI) [source: Net
Access]. In the modern office, most computers are already equipped to connect to the
Internet and browse the Web. With an intranet, there's no need to buy new equipment for
the end user or significantly restructure the corporate network. The only thing that needs
to be purchased and configured is a Web server (hardware and software) to host the
intranet. And the most popular Web server software, Apache, is free.
Image courtesy of Newport News Public Schools
Intranet sites allow employees access to confidential information.
Another benefit of using an intranet is improved information sharing and collaboration
across an organization [source: Digital Web Magazine]. Let's use the example of a sales
department in a software company. Instead of each salesman maintaining his own sales
lead lists and saving them on his own computer, all sales leads can be posted and tracked
on a central Web site on the corporate intranet [source: Intranet Roadmap]. Salesmen can
post and share product pitch scripts, training videos and industry reports. Instead of
sending hundreds of different group e-mails, all of the information lives at one central
location. This saves time, which in turn saves money.
Intranets become even more powerful when they're linked to corporate databases.
Suddenly, all of the information on the corporate network is searchable and accessible
through a simple Web interface. This can be another money saver for a company. Instead
of buying and licensing software for each and every desktop in the office, the company
can switch to Web-based applications that are accessed through a Web browser [source:
Devware]. Peoplesoft is a Web-based application that can be hosted on a corporate
intranet. Human resources can maintain employee records and customer service reps can
track help requests all through an intranet Web site.
Another financial benefit of intranets is that they're scaleable and flexible [source:
Intranet Roadmap]. A small company can turn a simple desktop PC into a Web server,
build some basic HTML Web pages and be up and running at practically no extra cost.
As the company grows, it can invest in a more robust Web server, hire a Web developer
to design more dynamic intranet Web pages and make more and more information and
software available online.
Beyond their tangible, financial benefits, intranets can also help develop and reinforce the
corporate culture of a business [source: Intranet Roadmap]. Executives can maintain
blogs on the company intranet site alerting employees to new and exciting developments.
Employee relations specialists can post newsletters, maintain event calendars and
organize volunteer groups through the intranet site. And employees themselves can start
blogs and build Wikis that explain every facet of corporate life.
For companies that also maintain well-trafficked, dynamic Internet Web sites, the
corporate intranet Web site can be a place to test out new ideas and emerging Web 2.0
features [source: Information Week]. Maybe a company is toying with the idea of
launching its own online social network or Internet television channel. All of the
technical quirks and usability issues can be worked out on the in-house intranet site so
that everything runs smoothly when the new features are unveiled to the public.
Now that we've covered some of the advantages of using an intranet, let's talk about how
an organization plans for and develops its intranet.
The Intranet
The term intranet refers to the fact that the web or other internet applications
are being run completely on the inside of a private network often without a direct
connection to the internet.
In recent development, the internet has become a common technology in most
businesses, organizations and institutions. In view of this fact, most of these
organizations have become accustomed to web browsers. This means that
organizations could use web browsers to disseminating information. This
information might not necessarily be accessed on the internet but on a local
server set up to be accessed on the inside using an internet browser. Here, at
UNIJOS, we have a server setup with thousands of documents occupying over 20
Gigabytes of Hard Disk space. These documents range from Literature to
Technical Training documents donated by Cliff Missen from widernet.
One can imagine if all these documents were on printed paper, the sheer volume
alone would scare one from browsing through to select a specific book. In fact, it
is ergonomically and economically sound because one could save a lot of space
and money. One could also do their bit for the environment by saving the trees –
what Cliff usually refers to as “Dead Trees and Ink”, i.e. printed documents.
Internet and Intranet Services
There are services that have being developed throughout internet and intranet
history. Most of these services came about solving one problem or the other by
programmers writing code and publishing it for other to benefit. These services
include:
_ File Transfer Protocol (FTP)—Transfers files between computers.
_ Telnet—A way to send commands to another computer and receive the
output.
_ Gopher—A menu-driven search engine for finding files by topic. Often used
with Telnet.
_ Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS)—A search engine that finds files
containing a particular text string.
_ News—A bulletin board service (BBS) that lets users post messages and read
and respond to those posted by others.
_ Mail—A convention for encoding electronic mail messages for transmission
over the network.
_ World Wide Web—A way to publish “pages” of information, including text,
graphics, multimedia objects such as sound and video clips, and links to
other pages.
Intranet Web Creation
There are five major topics related to deploying World Wide Web software on a
corporate LAN:
_ Install and configure TCP/IP
_ Install software on the Web server
_ Install software on the Web client
_ Publish content on the Web server
_ Maintain the server’s content
The TCP/IP Protocol Infrastructure
The Internet’s standard network protocol is TCP/IP; the Internet’s information
sharing tools can use this protocol, and many require it. The first step in
deploying an intranet is installing and configuring TCP/IP on the network’s
computers.
Each device node on the network is (or can be) assigned several TCP/IP
configuration settings with dots separating four sections, including an IP
address (such as 11.22.33.44) that identifies the node and its subnet, a subnet
mask that the node uses to identify nodes on other subnets, and a default
gateway to which the node sends frames destined for nodes on other subnets.
You may have assigned these settings statically, or you may have installed the
domain host configuration protocol (DHCP) service on a Windows NT Server
computer to assign these settings when each device boots.
If users reference computers using host names instead of memorizing IP
addresses, you have either entered common IP addresses and corresponding
host names in HOSTS files on the computers, or you have configured a domain
name service (DNS) to resolve host names to IP addresses dynamically. Similarly,
if users reference computers using NetBIOS names, you have either entered
addresses and names in LMHOSTS files on the computers, or you have
configured the Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) on a Windows NT Server
computer.
Install Web Server Software
Technically, a Web server communicates with clients using the HyperText
Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Web server and HTTP server are synonymous, which is
why URLs identifying data on a Web server begin with “http” (for example, the
Microsoft World Wide Web site is http://www.microsoft.com/).
HTTP, in turn, is a convention for sending messages over the TCP/IP network
protocol. If you install TCP/IP on the client and server computers, the Web client
and server software implement HTTP: you don’t need to “install” an HTTP
network protocol.
Web server software is typically a service written for a particular operating
system. The Web server computer may be dedicated to this task, or it can also
perform other tasks (if it runs other services) such as file, printer, or application
serving.
Microsoft offers Web servers in two software products:
_ Internet Information Server (IIS)
IIS runs on Windows NT Server 3.51, service pack 3 and above. It
includes Web, FTP, and Gopher server services, and is the preferred
Web server platform for business use.
_ FrontPage Personal Web Server
FrontPage is a Web page authoring tool that includes a Personal Web
Server component which lets people design and test pages on a single
computer. FrontPage is not optimized for typical business use.
Install Web Client Software
The most important Web client software is a Web browser: an application that
can communicate with a Web server using HTTP. There is a wide variety of Web
browsers. Some are shareware, others cost money; some are text-based, most
are graphical. Among the most popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer,
Netscape Navigator, and NCSA Mosaic.
Virtually all Web browsers can read and display documents written in the
HyperText Markup Language (HTML). An HTML document describes a “page”
which can contain text (with multiple fonts, and effects such as boldfacing,
underlining, colors, and so on), references to graphics that the browser can
display (typically GIF and JPEG formats), and hypertext links to other pages or
other kinds of documents.
Hypertext links are the key to the Web’s usefulness. Without them, a Web
browser is little more than a read-only word processor. With them, a Web
browser lets users navigate from one document to another by clicking a mouse,
without starting another application and without worrying about server names,
directories, or file names.
If you activate a URL that starts with “http” the computer tries to launch a Web
browser to locate and possibly display the data that the URL identifies. If the
browser cannot interpret the data, the browser starts another application to
display the document. For example, if the URL points to an Excel spreadsheet,
the browser starts Excel. Microsoft freely distributes Viewer applications that let
a client display Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access documents without
requiring the full-fledged applications.
If you activate an HTTP URL from another application, such as Exchange, the
computer starts your Web browser and directs it to display the data identified by
the URL. If you start the browser as a stand-alone application, it displays a
default page (home page).
Author and Publish Content
The Web server and browser are of little use unless the server has documents to
share. There are three ways to create (author) these documents (content):
_ Create a page (HTML document) that displays the information you want
people to see
You can do this with a text editor (such as Notepad) and an HTML programming
guide, or you can do it an easier way using an HTML page authoring tool: you
type or draw the information you want to share, and the tool creates the HTML
document for you. Such tools are available from Microsoft as part of Internet
Information Server and FrontPage.
_ Use authoring tools to create a page from another document
Microsoft freely distributes application add-ins called Internet Assistants for
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Schedule+. These products help you
convert existing documents into HTML.
Internet Information Server supplies the Internet Database Connector (IDC), an
add-in required for any Web server to access a Microsoft SQL Server database.
The Internet Database Connector helps you create Web pages “on the fly” from
SQL Server data.
SQL Server 6.5 supplies a Web Assistant which helps you automatically create
pages from database files, either on a schedule or when the data changes.
_ Create a page (by hand or with authoring tools) with a link to a non-HTML
document that the client’s applications can display
Maintain Content
Maintenance is a critical but frequently underestimated part of running a Web
site. Links make the Web useful for users, but they increase the labor for
authors and administrators.
For example, when you add a new document you may need to convert it to
HTML, add links from existing pages to the new page, or (if the new document
has been converted to HTML) add links to the new document. When you delete
an existing document you must ensure that documents to which it was linked
are still accessible, and ensure that other documents linked to the deleted one
are updated. The latter tasks are also necessary when you rename or move a
document.
Most page authoring tools, including Internet Information Server and FrontPage,
include tools to help you track links and maintain your pages.