Providing Internet and World Wide Web Services

Getting connected isn't as difficult as you might think.

The growth of the Internet has been an interesting reflection of the growth of networking in general. The first networks to be deployed in most companies were workgroup networks islands of connectivity. They were of various types, and they weren't connected to each other.

As networking technologies matured, and networking took on greater importance in many organizations, the workgroup networks grew and often became interconnected. The next step was enterprise-wide networking, and it wasn't long before companies began to deploy e-mail across those enterprise networks.

Today, many companies have full internal networks in place, and the growth of the Internet signals a continuance of the networking trend. Companies are now connecting via the Internet to their trading partners and prospective customers, much as the early workgroup networks interconnected to form a larger corporate network where different departments could collaborate on projects.

The Internet is also mirroring another trend: Just as we've seen microcomputers and workstations move from text-oriented, command-driven operating systems to graphical user interfaces, so too have services on the Internet shifted from the terse command-line types to the graphical World Wide Web.

A consequence of this shift toward the Internet is that network managers are often being asked to set up Internet connections and World Wide Web sites. This Tutorial is the first in a series designed to introduce network managers to the Internet and Web technologies.