A Computing View of the Total Area Network One of the hottest frontiers in technology is for software that will enable people to co-operate across national and economic frontiers. If you are not on the net, you are not in the know. Fortune Magazine Despite having no first-hand experience of the act, the authors have been assured by many friends and colleagues that there is more than one way of skinning a cat. In this chapter, we take a different view of a Total Area Network and illustrate how a similar end can be met from a completely different angle | Total Area Networking ATM IP Frame Relay and SMDS Explained. Second Edition John Atkins and Mark Norris Copyright 1995 1999 John Wiley Sons Ltd Print ISBN 0-471-98464-7 Online ISBN 0-470-84153-2 7 A Computing View of the Total Area Network One of the hottest frontiers in technology is for software that will enable people to co-operate across national and economic frontiers. If you are not on the net you are not in the know. Fortune Magazine Despite having no first-hand experience of the act the authors have been assured by many friends and colleagues that there is more than one way of skinning a cat. In this chapter we take a different view of a Total Area Network and illustrate how a similar end can be met from a completely different angle. In particular we explain the various steps in putting together an Intranet that is a Virtual Private Data Network based on Internet technology. The main aim in doing this is not so much to illustrate the components and applications that comprise an Intranet. It is more to show the approach taken and what the main concerns are when a computer-centric view is taken of a Total Area Network. The essential point is to show that the telecommunications approach builds on centralised intelligence but the net approach in contrast distributes intelligence. This distribution is partly in the servers and partly in the applications which are analogous to service logic aspects explained in the previous chapter. The overall effect is that instead of adding computers to communications here we add communications to computers. We start by explaining some of the basic elements of an Intranet and the technology that is used to assemble one. Following this we look at some of the applications that would typically be hosted on the network and how they would be used. To close some of the key issues with this type of Total Area Network are discussed along with a few of the practical implementation details. 158 A COMPUTING VIEW OF THE TOTAL AREA NETWORK
