Internet Connection Benefits

The following document describes the mechanisms for Internet connection, reasons why Internet and Word Wide Web access may is of importance to companies, and the costs involved in providing such access.

What is the Internet?

The Internet is a network of computer networks. All the computers in your company might be one such network. These networks could be connected directly to another network, but more typically, a company's network is connected to other networks by subscribing to an Internet provider.

The Internet provider connects all the networks that subscribe to them. In addition, all the Internet providers are networked together, so if your network is connected to an Internet provider, you are connected to all companies connected to any Internet provider anywhere in the world.

'Networks' connected to the Internet range from a single PC to networks containing thousands of computers and 10's of thousands of users. Computers can be connected to the Internet via dial-up modems using the telephone line, or via permanent high speed connections.

What can Internet connection provide?

Electronic Mail The most commonly used feature of the Internet is Electronic Mail. This allows any user on any computer connected to the Internet to exchange E-Mail with any other person connected to the Internet anywhere in the world.

World Wide Web The World Wide Web is a means of making large quantities of information available to people connected to the Internet in an easy to use and attractive form. Companies create their own Web Home pages, which can store text, diagrams and pictures.

The format of the information is known as Hypertext, which allows information to be easily cross referenced, and organised into topics from which the user can choose and expand on. A well known example of a simple text only Hypertext document would be the Help pages available on your Windows PC's.

The World Wide Web can also be used to link topics to other computers. For example, a user may view a particular topic, which appears to be stored on the same computer, but which is in fact is stored on a completely different computer half way around the world.

Information can also be downloaded from a Web Page onto a users local computer, or printed their own printer.

News Users can subscribe to various news groups to take part in computer forums and have discussions on specified topics copied to their own computer.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) used to transfer files to and from other computers connected to the Internet.

Telnet is used to log into other computers on the Internet as if you were directly connected to it.

Others Various other programs are available to allow searching for files on the Internet.

What Benefit can Electronic Mail Provide?

Electronic Mail can dramatically increase the quality and quantity of information exchanged by individuals within your organisation. The Internet extends this to all communication with external organisations.

1. Time Management

Electronic mail allows people to better organise their time, cutting down on the time taken trying to reach people by phone, allowing them to deal with their in-tray at times convenient to them, and reducing the amount of phone interruptions. Exchange of information also no longer depends on both parties being next to their phone at the same time.

2. Quality of communication

Ideas and arguments tend to be more precise when written.

3. International Communication

The benefits of exchanging information without both parties being at their phone at the same time is even more pronounced when communicating with individuals in different time zones.

4. Instant document transfer

Documents of any size can be transmitted instantly anywhere in the world, and unlike a fax, the document can be edited and modified by the recipient.

5. Credibility

Electronic Mail is now so common that a mail address is now taken for granted by many people.

What benefit can the World Wide Web provide?

Firstly, what the World Wide Web cannot provide. The WWW is currently not a means for advertising. For someone to view any information on a companies Web Page, they will generally have to know the location (computer address) of the Web page, and will be accessing it for a specific reason.

The World Wide Web page does provide a means of providing information to your existing customers. You would maintain something of interest and value to these customers on the Web page, and the Web Page then becomes an extremely cost effective way of promoting company image, goods and services.

Companies can make their entire promotional material, reference information, and on-line support available, providing differentiation from their competitors, and providing a service that is of real benefit to their customers.

This material can be made freely available, restricted to your registered customers, or provided to paying customers only.

Will my computer systems be secure?

Electronic Mail Internet access is inherently secure. Provision of the other features of the Internet needs to be managed with more care, but can be made secure by means of a 'Firewall' system. This is basically a computer whose job it is to look at all traffic on your network, and specifically all traffic to and from the Internet, and to prevent any unauthorised connections or transfers.

What will I need to connect Electronic Mail?

This depends on the sort of computer systems that you use, and whether you wish your internal mail system to be integrated into the Internet, or kept separate.

Option 1

If you are using PC's, and wish to keep your Internet Mail and PC mail separate, you can simply subscribe to an Internet Mail provider for around £10/month and purchase a modem for about £100 per person. The Mail software to send and receive mail from the Internet will be provided free of charge by your Internet provider.

Option 2

If you are using PC's and wish to integrate Internet Mail with a PC network mail system, so that you can send and receive Internet mail using this system, you will need to purchase a 'Gateway' system to allow translation between the two.

You would only require a single subscription, and one modem for all your users, but you would need to purchase a PC, and Gateway software that will cost £2000 or more depending on your PC mail system.

Option 3

If you do not currently use mail, but wish to install a PC based system that gives mail internally to your organisation, and externally to the Internet, we recommend the installation of a Mail server PC that serves both as an internal mail store, and as an Internet Gateway. Again, you need only one subscription and modem, but you would need to purchase the Mail server computer. The cost of the software would depend on the number of people that you wanted to connect to mail.

Server based mail systems are inherently more reliable than PC Network mail solutions, and allow more straightforward connection to the Internet.

Option 4

If your site has a UNIX computer, the software that you require will probably already be present on your system. TCP/IP, PPP and Sendmail.

TCP/IP Software to provide basic networking capability between computers.

PPP Point to Point Protocol. Software to allow two computers to communicate using TCP/IP via a serial line, typically over a phone line via a modem, via a leased line, or via ISDN.

Sendmail Software to route electronic mail to the correct persons on your internal UNIX network, and to and from the Internet.

For Electronic mail, the system can be connected to the Internet for the price of an Internet subscription at around £10 per month and a Modem. The TCP/IP, PPP and Sendmail will need to be configured, and you may elect to purchase a third party PPP package rather than use the one provided with your UNIX system.

MIME Support

Standard Internet mail only allows plain text to be transmitted. Mailing a Spreadsheet, or graphics image would result in a corrupt data file arriving at the recipients end.

Internet mail also does not support attachment of multiple documents to a mail message.

Typically, users have used a package called uuencode to translate non text files into plain text, and then the recipient decodes the document at the other end using the same package.

MIME is a standard for encoding files for mail transmission. It translates non-text files into plain text, allows multiple attachments, and allows the sender to identify the type of file being sent so that the recipients mail reader has the option of displaying the file in a meaningful way.

Most current mail systems, and all new mail programs will be supporting MIME for transmission across the Internet, so any site expecting to receive mail from the Internet should install MIME software.

You will need to make sure that your Mail program supports MIME, or purchase a MIME translation utility for your software.

Is Internet Mail separate from Internal Mail?

Many sites will use PC's with their own modem to communicate with the Internet, and have an Internet, Compuserve, or Microsoft Mail Network subscription for each individual. Internally, these individuals might use a PC Network mail system such as CC Mail, UNIX mail, or a package such as Uniplex Mail.

A better solution is to have all Internet mail enter via a single Internet connection, and be distributed automatically to the appropriate internal mailbox for the user. For outgoing mail, the user uses their internal mail package, and it is automatically routed through the single Internet connection where appropriate.

If you are using a PC Mail system, an Internet Mail Gateway could be used to pass mail from your Mail package to the Internet, and visa versa.

If you have a PC network, but currently do not make use of any particular mail package, or if you find your PC Mail system unreliable or overloaded, you would be better to install a Mail server on your network to handle both the Internet Mail and the Internal mail, and provide an appropriate PC Mail package on each PC to access this mail.

What will I need to allow my users full access to the Internet?

By full access, I mean the ability to use Telnet, FTP or a Web Browser to access remote Internet sites.

If you are using a single PC, or if all your users using character based terminals or terminal emulators connected to a central UNIX box, all these features will be available with the simple connection requirements detailed for E-Mail. (Note: most people would find a character based Web Browser unacceptable)

If however, you have users on a network of computers that you wish to connect fully to the Internet you will need the following:

Firstly, you will need to purchase a Router. This routes packages received from the Internet to the correct computers on your network.

Secondly, you will probably find that a modem connection is not fast enough to service this on-line activity, so you will need a leased line, or ISDN link to your Internet provider.

Lastly, the basic £10 per month subscription option offered by Internet providers will not support these activities, as it provides for direct connection of a single computer only, and not for connection of all computers on your network. The cost of this will vary with each Internet provider, and options will exist which include such things as the rental of a router. Ignoring the cost of a router, the monthly connection cost is likely to be 10 times the basic connection cost.

What will I need to provide a World Wide Web Service?

You have two choices. Your first option is to purchase a computer to act as a Web server (A computer that holds the information, and to which other people can connect to in order to look at it), purchase a router, and subscribe to an Internet provider using a high speed ISDN link, all of which would cost the best part of £10,000. Your second option is to rent World Wide Web space from your Internet provider. The cost of this depends on the amount of information that you store, but would probably be in the region of £50 per month.

Having your own Web Server is more expensive, but does have the advantage of allowing you to use it as an internal resource for E-mail, Bulletin Board Information, Product information and specifications etc.

You will need to have someone (I would recommend Centreline 2000 Corporation!) to set up your web pages. In addition the actual information needs to be prepared, involving text entry, presentation, and cross referencing. The information needs to be split manageable topics and indexed to make it the easier it is for your customers to find what they are looking for. The easier the information is to access, the more valuable the service becomes to them.

Can anyone get access to the information on the World Wide Web?

Usually a Web page is set up with publicly available information.

For sites that wish to provide information to paying customers, you may set up a Web page with some private information available to a restricted set of people. The public area would contain promotional material, and allow people to see what restricted information was available, but not to actually see the information itself.

Additional benefits

Any work that is done for the World Wide Web can also be used to produce information on CD ROM. Essentially, there would be no difference between the CD ROM information and the World-wide Web information. The advantage of the World-Wide Web is that it provides up to date information (as long as you keep it up to date!) from anywhere in the world, and all you have to do is let someone know where to look.

The advantage of the CD ROM is that nearly all PC's now come with CD ROM drives, whereas not all PC's currently come with a modem and Internet subscription. Accessing a CD ROM is also faster, and does not incur telephone charges when used.

The cost of a CD depends on the volume, but even for low volumes the cost is modest. Remember also that the amount of information that can be stored on a CD is far, far greater than a brochure. The information is presented in a far more impressive manner, and is far easier to access.