WAN intranet - Research Paper Example

Companies with remote locations have started preferring using intranet instead of conventional network configurations because it is easier navigating the intranet than a Local Area Network (LAN). Thus, LANs are being replaced by LANs in progressive organizations. The users login to an internal site to carry out organizational chores, much like using a website. An intranet is just like an organization’s isolated internet. For a company that has numerous remote locations that need to be connected to the private network, remote-access, also called a Virtual Private Network (VPN), is implemented which is actually a user-to LAN connection.

When a company has to implement an enormous remote-access, like that of 100 locations, the VPN has to be contracted out with an Enterprise Service Provider (ESP). This ESP will set up a network access server and will deliver desktop client software to the users at all the hundred remote locations, who then install it on their computers. This will be called the VPN client software. The users will then dial up a call to connect to a local Point of Presence (POP) of the ESP to eventually access the network access server and will use their VPN client software to get connected to the company’s private network after having themselves authenticated to the VPN server, where they can share the centralized database, carry out their web business, web meetings, and transfer information.

The users are also able to access the centralized database because the installed intranet server enables fast and reliable access to database records by removing the need to replicate databases for separate clients at remote locations (Knight et al., 2005). VPN client is the calling router and the VPN server is the answering router. The VPN client software makes possible a safe and encrypted link between the company’s network and all the hundred remote locations via an intermediary third party.

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