Q. Dr Paul - our Internet guru says that she is now an Intranet guru and that we should be using the Intranet now, not the Internet. She also says that Intranet skills are very highly paid and that if we don’t give her a pay rise, then she’s going to take that big job she’s been offered at the local Internet provider. Is she telling the truth? Suspicious of Salzburg
A. Dear Suspicious - You have asked a lot of questions. My dictionary defines guru in its cynical sense as "a leader or chief theoretician of a movement" - and it’s nice to see that the Internet guru profession is now moving in an equal opportunities direction. Too many Internet gurus have been male "propeller-heads".
Intranet has been getting a lot of hype recently, as well as in education. My favourite Web search engine lists 212 hits on the search "Intranet AND Education". Mind you, they are not all what they seem - indeed one UK educational project called "Project IntraNet" does say confusingly that it is not an Intranet project in the usual sense! Others, like Georgia College Distance Education Unit with their "Office of Internet & Intranet Provider Services", hedge their bets by putting the two words together.
In a nutshell, an Intranet is a network just like the Internet, but run for the benefit of one particular organisation. It uses the same TCP/IP protocols as the Internet; and the same kinds of servers (World Wide Web, gopher, etc.). But there are differences.
An Intranet is normally only accessible to the members of the organisation. So in the case of a university, only staff and students of the university would have access. And staff would typically have access to more facilities and databases than students. An Intranet is normally insulated to some extent from the "chaos" of the full Internet. Sometimes, users of the Intranet cannot reach the Internet at all. More often nowadays the users of the Intranet can send email to and from the Internet, and access Web servers on the Internet through a proxy server. This is a special kind of Web server that sits on the boundary between the Intranet and the Internet, filtering each Web request from a user on the Intranet and then fetching on the user’s behalf the required page from the Internet; so that the users never really access the Internet themselves. The proxy server could be set up to not allow access to certain parts of the Internet, such as racist or pornographic material, and this feature, though a kind of censorship, is felt to be essential by some high schools.
Quite often, users on the Internet (such as outside the organisation) cannot access services on the Intranet at all. But only large companies and the largest distance teaching universities can afford to install Intranets allowing dial-in access over a wide geographical area. Yet very often staff on the move, and students, would want to access the Intranet when off-campus. Thus it is common to allow users on the Internet to connect to the Intranet, but subject to various kinds of authorisation, including having to type in a user code and password (just as if they were logging into a computer conferencing system).
The Intranet allows an organisation to reduce the amount of software and user training it deploys on users’ machines. This is because it can specify a specific Internet browser (such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer) and then transform as many services as it can into browser format. This can be done very well with any kind of database or form-filling sort of application.
It is not nearly so easy to do this with an industrial-strength electronic mail or conferencing system, but several organisations (mostly universities; companies seem either too wise or too rich to want to do it) are nevertheless trying to do this too. An easier way to move is to develop the existing email features in standard browsers, or use one of the increasing number of "plug-ins" to the standard browsers. The trouble is, as soon as one uses a plug-in, the simplicity of the browser interface breaks down, and the challenge of keeping all plug-ins up to date becomes daunting. Another area which many people are looking at is replacing file servers by Web servers. File servers are essential to many organisations, but it is hard to access them from out of the office or campus, unless special protocols are used. The Intranet concept allows users to store their files on FTP servers and access them via the usual dial-up TCP/IP methods. However, most users are reluctant to make the change, for two reasons: the FTP service (such as from within an Internet browser) to access files is not as nice to use as the usual file server interface, and the transfer of user files to and from the FTP server is not easy at the current poor level of integration between office systems packages and the Internet. Both problems are being actively addressed, most forcefully by Microsoft.
At the current stage of development of Internet browsers, there is no point in trying to transform the other stalwarts of company and education users, namely word processing and spreadsheets, into an Internet browser format, using the standard browsers, at least. However, there are developments involving programmable extensions to browsers (such as the Java and Javascript languages) that may provide some interesting answers in this area, although I think it will be a long time before users are prepared to trade in their favourite office systems suite for the Internet version.
The Intranet can be used for all the things that the Internet is used for in education, but with the added advantage that material can be confidential, network performance can be much better, and the distracting effect of the Internet removed. For examples, lecturers can put class notes on the Intranet that only students of that course can access; academics can discuss future syllabus or examination strategy without students or outsiders eavesdropping; high schools can set homework assignments without parents worrying that their children are surfing into unsuitable areas.
The Intranet in an organisation normally runs over connections owned or at least managed by the organisation, either Local Area Networks, or wide area network links rented from telecommunications companies. This extra degree of control allows the organisation to use higher-speed links, high-performance routers (telephone exchanges for data traffic), and experimental protocols (such as for real-time TCP/IP) that could not be used, or cannot be used yet, on the full Internet. This allows the Intranet to offer services that are not yet easy to provide over the Internet at large.
A particular example of this is the use of audio broadcasting (RealAudio) over corporate Intranets. Various universities including the Open University and Brown university, and several companies, are taking this up.
At higher bandwidths, a few adventurous companies including some in Europe (who do not want to be named) are working on providing video over the Intranet to use in corporate training.
Intranet is certainly getting big business. Many of the large computer companies have over a hundred Intranet Web servers - Digital Equipment reports having around 350. The conference and consultant circuit is also active. A Forrester Research report says that one eighth of large companies have installed Intranet. Forrester predict the emergence of a next-generation Intranet, enhanced by five standards-based services: directory, email, file, print, and network management; and that this "Full Service Intranet" will displace today’s proprietary Network Operating Systems. Dr Paul regards that as typical consultants’ hype.
Regarding your guru, Intranet and Internet skills are certainly now in demand. But the pace of life in an Internet provider may not suit many people in academia, despite the high salaries - and Intranet projects, like the Internet itself, are no respecters of moral sensibilities.
For a brief technical overview at: http://www.at.infowin.org/ACTS/IENM/Bulletin/05-1996/intranet.html.
Detailed technical reports at: http://www.strom.com/pubwork/intranetp.html.
and the cleverly named site: http://www.intranet.co.uk/intranet/intranet.html.
The Forrester Research report outline is at: http://www.forrester.com/hp_mar96nsr.htm.
An interesting Intranet newsletter is at: http://www.brill.com/intranet/.
and there are discussion groups at: http://www.brill.com/intranet/ijx/msg/574.html for training http://www.brill.com/intranet/ijx/msg/1188.html.
http://www.brill.com/intranet/ijx/msg/1188.html for education (though mostly on schools).
The RealAudio list of examples in education and training is at: http://www.prognet.com/intranet/examples.html with a list of links to actual examples.