Inside the Intranet

An intranet shares most of the characteristics of the Internet, but in at least one way, it's fundamentally different. And just as the Internet has had profound effect on how we communicate, intranets have transformed the business world as well. Both Fortune 500 corporations and small businesses have implemented this network infrastructure, improving productivity while reducing costs.

Just what is an intranet? Think of it as a mini-Internet designed to be used within the confines of a business, university or organization. What distinguishes an intranet from the freely accessible Internet, is that intranets are private.

Traditionally, corporations relied on proprietary hardware and software systems to network its computers, a costly and time-consuming process made more difficult when offices are scattered around the world. Even under the best of conditions, sharing information among different hardware platforms, file formats and software is not an easy task. By using off-the-shelf Internet technology, intranets solve this problem, making internal communication and collaboration much easier.

Intranets use HTML to create documents and TCP/IP to transmit information across the network. Information is stored on one or more company servers and accessed by using a web browser, such as Firefox or Internet Explorer. This self-contained, miniature Internet can have all the same features--individual home pages, blogs, e-mail--but access is usually restricted to employees and contractors.

For employees who are already familiar with surfing the Web, learning how to navigate the company intranet requires little training. Intranet web pages have the same point-and-click interface. While it's useful for an intranet to connect to the Internet, it's certainly not essential. Even if they do connect externally, companies restrict access to their intranet from the Internet by building a firewall. With so much corporate information available on internal servers, security is essential.