What Can You Do with an Intranet?

An intranet adds Internet-like services to your LAN. Many organizations, especially those with large existing computer systems, have lots of information that is hard to get at. The intranet can change all that, by using Internet tools. Here are some ideas for ways that your organization-large or small-ean use an intranet.

E-mail within the organization and to and from the Internet People can use one e-mail program to exchange mail both with other intranet users and with the Internet.

• Private discussion groups Using a mailing list manager or a news server accessible only to people in your organization, you can set up mailing lists or newsgroups to encourage people to share information within departments or across the organization. Alternatively, you can use web-based message boards,
• Private web sites Each department in your organization can create a web site that is accessible only to people on the intranet. Instead of circulating memos and handbooks, information can go on these web sites. For example, the marketing department can post information about products, including upcoming release dates, how products are targeted, and other information that isn't appropriate for a public site on the Internet-based web. By using the intranet instead of printing on paper, it's economical to publish large documents and documents that change frequently.
• Access to databases If your organization has information in databases, you can convert the data to web pages so that everyone on the intranet can see it. For example, a nonprofit organization might have a database containing all of its fundraising and membership information. By using a program that can display database information as web pages and enter information from web page forms into the database, all the people at the organization can see, and even update, selected information from the database by using only a web browser. Naturally, the program would need to limit who could see and change particular information in the database.
• Teleconferencing Rather than spend big bucks on video teleconferencing systems, think about using your intranet (and the Internet), instead. If your organization has offices in several locations, you can use the Internet for online chats with text, voice, shared whiteboards, and even limited video

About DSL Connections

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) is a family of all-digital, high-speed lines that use your normal phone wires with special modems on either end. Most DSL lines are actually ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line). ADSL is optimized for the way many people use the Internet: more downloads than uploads. The line is asymmetric, because it has more capacity for data received by your computer (such as graphics, video, audio, and software upgrades) than for data that you send (such as e-mail and browser commands).

How Filtering Works?

When you set up a filter in your e-mail program, the program moves messages from inbox to a designated folder as Soon they are received. This process enables you focus on the mail in your inbox when time is tight and to leave the filtered mail in Cler folders for when you have more time. Alternatively, you may choose to target -priority e-mail and filter it into another folder, which you attend to first. Filtering works by looking at the contents of the message. Normally, you tell your e-mail application to look at the contents of the message and to do something with the message based on what it finds. You may choose to look at the headers, such as who - message is to or from, or what the subject line is. Alternatively, you may want to at specific words in the message. For instance, you may want to filter all messages at least put the message in a folder that you specify.

Devising a rule to sort messages that always come from the same place or that are always addressed to the same address usually is easy. For instance, you can easily sort messages from a mailing list or from a small group of people (say, the eight colleagues rking with you on a particular project). However, sorting junk mail (unsolicited marketing messages) out of your inbox is considerably more difficult because you have devise a rule that sorts only junk mail and not the mail that you actually want to read.