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Connectivity

Most intranets will not be self-contained within one environment. Several locations, be they offices, homes, or mobile offices, will be hooked together, either by direct connections with one another or through the Internet. This means you must provide for connectivity between the client and the server. This is not a big challenge on a typical LAN, as everything is already connected. If your intranet is going to be self-contained within the LAN, there already is an existing ethernet, or possibly ARCnet, system linking the LAN. After you've determined where your intranet server will reside, the next step is to add modems so users from outside the LAN can dial in. In this case, you'll probably need a Shiva or other brand of network modem system. If you want to connect to the Internet or connect two offices in different geographic locations through direct connection, you'll need an outside connection, or bandwidth.

There are a few different levels of bandwidth. If you just want to use e-mail or a program like Freeloader to surf the Internet, you can get away with a 28.8 modem for your office and a dial-up account. This is probably enough to handle Internet mail and light surfing for an office of up to 10 users. If you have more than 10 users, Internet use is greater, or people are reaching your intranet through the Internet, you will want something like an ISDN line, which is 128 KB/s. You could use an ISDN to connect a few offices. If you had three small offices with a limited number of users, the offices could be connected with an ISDN line and data could be exchanged at a high rate of speed; it also could handle audio- and video-conferencing. But if these offices had hundreds of users, the line would jam immediately. In this case, I recommend a T-1 (1.5 MB/s) or T-3 (10 MB/s), which are established data lines-but this is an expensive solution. A direct connection like this either to the Internet or to another location is a permanent high-speed data connection. Unlike a modem, these lines are always running, are digital, and can transport data very quickly. However, if you're connecting two or three offices or want a big pipe to the Internet or lots of surfing, a T-1 is necessary. A T-3 is only necessary if your intranet requires audio- and video-conferencing at high rates of speeds or if thousands of users regularly access the site.

To minimize bandwidth usage, consider using Freeloader or a similar program. Freeloader software goes out on the Internet on a regular basis and downloads favorite sites so your users can surf them locally. This lets them surf frequently visited sites quickly using minimum bandwidth.

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