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For most small businesses, connecting to the Internet is usually undertaken by sticking a modem into a PC and dialing in to a dial up service provider. This is a cheap, simple way for the individual to get connected.However, telephone lines only allow a restricted amount of data to flow down them, and in an office situation, you need one line per person - which gets expensive.
An alternative is to set up an Intranet - a sort of mini-Internet service designed to run within a building. This solution enables small businesses of say just three or four users up to as many as thirty or more to connect to the Internet via a single connection or gateway.
To make this solution work you need several component parts including an ISDN line - plus rather more technical knowledge than the software packaging would have you believe.
I decided to check out this new technology and put together - with the help of a friend - a relatively low cost, fully featured intranet and Internet gateway for a small to medium sized organisation.
So if you have three grand burning a hole in your corporate pocket, and few days to spare setting it up, this is the solution for you…
Firstly, one assumes your users each have a computer - known in networking parlance as clients. These clients are linked together on a Local Area Network - LAN. Depending on configuration, these machines can be running any one of a variety of network operating systems including Windows 3.11, 95, NT and Macintosh. As long as the client machines support TCP/IP - the internationally accepted protocol for Internet networking - you're in business.
Then you need an Internet server - a computer that acts like an electronic pump. It does not need to be particularly powerful. If you hapen to have an old 486 with 32 MB RAM lying about, this should be quite sufficient. The expensive part is the Windows NT 4.0 Server software you need to install on it. This comes with Internet Information Server, which is used as the Intranet web server. A suitable PC and software combined costs around £1300
This software controls your gateway to the Internet by allowing a number of networked computer users to access the Internet simultaneously via one ISDN dial-up connection. This package uses Windows NT's Remote Access system included with Windows NT Server. Microsoft Proxy Server software retails at around £700.
Web Protect by Trend Micro works with Microsoft Proxy server to protect web users from malicious code and viruses contained in downloaded files. Its also a good idea to install anti-virus protection is on each client workstation. A network server anti-virus package will cost in the region of £400.
Several excellent email server packages are available for download from the Internet. They will dial up your service provider automatically and send and retrieve email at times determined by the users. This makes the system very flexible and saves greatly on connection charges. We used a package called FTGate available via the Internet on http://www.demon.co.uk/floosietek This set us back a mere £100 for 20 users. For larger companies MS Exchange Server can be installed and there are also several commercial Internet gateway packages available for Microsoft Mail and Lotus cc:Mail.
The beauty of this system is that the entire firm's Internet traffic - Email and the World Wide Web - flows along one single ISDN line. There are a number of deals currently on offer both from BT and a number of other companies - so shop around for a bargain. It would be reasonable to budget for around £500 for setting up ISDN - including a reasonable number of call units.
Many thanks to Chris Attewell of Noko (formerly WebArt Design) for his assistance in researching this article - +44 (0)23 80905555, chris.attewell@noko.co.uk