Linking your LAN to the Internet

For many systems, it will be sufficient to install and configure a Web server on an isolated server computer. This provides all the security you need, by ensuring that the Web server is not in contact with other servers in your office, but means that you cannot use the Web server for any local operations, such as network user access to the Web or e-mail delivery.

This chapter describes the different ways in which you might need to connect different platforms, network protocols and operating systems. It would probably be most useful for an administrator who wants to setup an intranet server for a network, but is equally useful for anyone who needs to link their Internet server to an existing LAN.

One of the main problems is likely to be the mix of network protocols. Your Web server works with the TCP/IP protocol, but your existing network might run NetBEUI (under Microsoft), SPX/IPX (under Novell) or another networking protocol. To add confusion, your LAN server might be based on Novell NetWare and your Web server on Microsoft NT or Unix.

If you want to use the Web server as a gateway for network user access to the Internet, then the workstation operating system will become an important factor: should you install TCP/IP onto the workstations, together with any existing network protocol, or should you limit the functions that a user can carry out (for example, just e-mail that does not need TCP/IP on...