Welcome to the first post in the series ‘Know A Word‘ and in the first post itself ‘Know A word’ became ‘Know two words’. Every day we talk about Internet, what’s happening in this virtual world and how it’s affecting our day to day life. But many don’t know the sister terms of Internet, Intranet and Extranet unless they are from a big corporate organization which uses Intranet and Extranet.
So, What is Intranet?
Intranet is just a network like internet which uses the same protocol but is limited within an organization. As wikipedia puts it, Intranet is “the internal website” or “a private version of the Internet”. The site and the information that are in the intranet are not published in the internet. So unless a computer is part of the organization’s LAN that is connected to server which is publishing the intranet pages, it will not be able to access any intranet pages.
The basic usage of intranet is to serve as a communication portal within a group or organization.
What is Extranet?
Extranet exists over internet. It’s a private network like intranet but this is published through internet which can be accessed by authenticating. The mode of authentication is very high by means of virtual private Network (VPN) or other such authenticating software, firewalls etc. As Wikipedia puts it, Extranet is “a private internet over the Internet”.
The basic usage of extranet is to provide necessary information and communication to an organization’s customers and related entities. It’s also used by employees who are not able to connect to intranet.
First time I actually heard of extranet, although the meaning could have been derived from the term easily you actually taught me a new word, kudos for that!