Firewalls, Tunnels and Routers

Abstract

An organisation may experience two disadvantages in having a connection to the WWW and the Internet:

• The possible usage of the Internet for non-useful applications (by employees).

• The possible connection of non-friendly users from the global connection into the organisations local network.

For these reasons many organisations have shied away from connection to the global network and have set up intranets. These are in-house, tailor-made internets for use within the organisation and provide limited access (if any) to outside services and also limit the external traffic into the intranet (if any). An intranet might have access to the Internet but there will be no access from the Internet to the organisation’s Intranet.