INTRANET FAQs This document will highlight questions/problems faced when considering Intranets. Questions posed here will range from the simple to the highly complex. We will be posting questions here as and when people email these to us. You are invited to send in your feed-back on any question. Please mention the question number in your email for reference. 1. Where can i find this FAQ ? on the web at http://www.intrack.com/intranet/ifaq.shtml or email smart@intrack.com 2. Intranet Basics Q2.1 What is an Intranet ? A2.1 An Intranet is the use of Internet technologies within an organization (or company) to achieve better results than the conventional means of data access and transfer. Intranet helps in cutting costs, easy and fast accessibility of day to day information. Q2.2 How is it different from "the" Internet ? A2.2 Generally speaking an Intranet is different from an Internet in the following ways: i. Intranet is a network within the organization whereas Internet is a world wide network . ii. Intranet has access to Internet but not vice- versa. Q2.3 How is an intranet solution better than a groupware solution ? cheaper ? versatile ? flexible ? A2.3 The bottom line difference between a WWW server and "collaborative" computing solutions such as Lotus Notes is design philosophy. Designed as a proprietary system in an area lacking widespread connectivity, Lotus Notes uses a proprietary database structure, which replicates data and does not provide quick access to remote databases. Cheaper ? The use of client browsers with one standard Window interface, offers the easy integration with other applications, such as electronic mail, faxes, calendaring, videoconferencing, and hot links within messages. As a single interface to a variety of information sources, the browser is cost-effective, highly efficient, and very easy to use. Versatile ? An Intranet server, eliminates the need to replicate database by providing users with easy access to source data. A single WWW server platform can support Internal and External applications for both internal information - sharing and external marketing on the Internet. Notes, on the other hand, is purely an internal application. Flexible ? The Intranet enables users to centralize their information resources in a single point-and-click environment - the browser - which is available on a variety of client platforms (PC, Mac, Unix,etc) Content can be easily accessed by browsers on any platform, in any location. With Notes, data distribution is in realtime, on an as-requested basis, over a public (or private) network. Q2.4 Is an intranet faster than getting data over the internet ? A2.4 If the network is totally contained within a LAN, then you do get LAN speeds. i.e. the web server is connected via LAN to the client PC's. If you are connecting remote locations, and use the Internet as your backbone / transport, then your speed becomes dependent on the Internet itself, and the speeds by which you connect to it. If performance is really the issue, you could also run your Intranet over private lines, such as frame relay. Then you can actually contract with the phone company for actual performance levels of speed. i.e. 56K, 256K, etc Approximately Intranet operates at 10mbs - 100mbs internal and 28.8k for remote access employees. After working for hours on the Intranet, the Internet is painfully slow at 28.8k or 14.4k from home. You WILL be surprised at the difference client machine speed makes on Intranet LAN-based access. It is not network bandwidth always, client speed very important! Q2.5 Do I have to know CGI, Perl, Java to get started on my Intranet project ? A2.5 No. But knowing some or all of the above will certainly help you down the road. 3. Intranet Implementation Q3.1 Can you setup an Intranet without a TCP/IP connection ? HOW ? A3.1 If you are running Netscape Navigator to review how the pages look on my local machine try using a freeware dll file called mozilla.dll You can perfectly be using the Netscape web browser links that reference local files. Instead of being a link like "http://www.foobar.com/index.shtmll" you get a link that looks like "file:\\c:\website\index.shtml". All links, references to graphics files, and everything else works fine. This would not necessarily apply to interactive features that use cgi scripts, java, etc. (although there might be a way to get these to work also). Consequently, it would seem that using this approach, you could set up a basic Intranet without webserver software, and without running tcp/ip stacks. Just put all the html files up on the Novell server, make sure that everybody's drives are mapped to a common standard , outfit all the clients with Netscape and Mozilla, and you've got a basic Intranet. Note : If you want to do fancy java scripts, forms using cgi, etc., this might not work. Q3.2 Can you setup an Intranet without a Web server ? A3.2 Yes. You can have your web browser point to the html files stored on a local drive. However you would probably need a server for more dynamic applications like forms, cgi, java etc. Q3.3 What is a firewall ? Where can i get more info on firewalls ? A3.3 A firewall is any one of several ways of protecting one network from another untrusted network. The actual mechanism whereby this is accomplished varies widely, but in principle, the firewall can be thought of as a pair of mechanisms: one which exists to block traffic, and the other which exists to permit traffic. Some firewalls place a greater emphasis on blocking traffic, while others emphasize permitting traffic. Refer to the firewall FAQ at: http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/firewalls-faq/faq.html for more information. Q3.4 What are the hardware and software components of an intranet ? A3.4 Intranet server hardware : intranet server software: tcp/ip stack browser/s firewall advanced components : Hot Java Perl Shockwave Q3.5 Can I run an Intranet on a Novell Netware based network ? A3.5 Yes. A simple setup can involve simple placing all your html files on a shared network drive and having your users point their browsers to this directory. ex. f:\intranet\home.htm If you need to support more advanced applications based in CGI, Java etc you will need to setup a web server. This can be TCP/IP based server. You can get Novells Web Server (link to www.novell.com) or any one of the servers available in the market. Q3.6 Is an Intranet simply a type of client-server system ? A3.6 Loosely defined Yes. You can also interpret an Intranet solution as being a superset of client server systems. Some people refer to an Intranet solution as a "thin" client based client server system. Yet others say Intranets are client-server systems done right. Take your pick Q3.7 What convention should we use for assigning IP addresses on an Intranet ? A3.7 The official document from Internic on conventions for assignment of IP addresses for Intranets. Q3.8 Policies on Intranet What type of policy and procedures should be implemented in and intranet? Anyone have a set they can share? A3.8 Look at standard Network security policy. A intranet is only the application of Internet technology on a private network. You need to look at who can setup a server Who controls and maintains the information presented. Who has what level of access to what data. Some of the Security news groups and web servers have good references. Not many people are willing to publish their security policy. Q3.9 Platform for Intranets. We're students, and we're planning to set up an Intranet. What platform do you think is the most appropiate for a ... lets say about 100 users? A3.9 You will probably need some more information on your environment to decide on the platform. Besides the number of users consider the following factors when considering hardware and software for your intranets. Network topology Server Operating system (UNIX v/s NT) Client workstation types Potential uses of the intranet Potential traffic and bandwidth requirements Existing browser and other legacy systems Based on some or most of this information you will be able to narrow down to a few vendors and technologies. Remember the advantage of an intranet solution is that you can "mix-and-match". You aren't tied down to a particular vendor or a specific software. Keep an open mind. Do your research. Always keep the users in mind. 4. Miscellaneous Q4.1 Question for Small Firms: Can Intranet and Internet Coexist ? A4.1 Check out this site "http://pubs.iworld.com/ww-online/96Apr/intranet/question.html" to get answer of this question. Q4.2 Can u list some books on intranets ? A4.2 Check out this site "http://www.intrack.com/intranet/books.shtml". Q4.3 What is an Extranet? How this is any different from intranet ? A4.3 Loosely defined, an extranet is an intranet extended beyond the corporate boundaries. When selective access is provided to entities outside the organization and intranet becomes an extranet. For ex. if your company allows its suppliers, clients etc. to have access to your intranet, its an extranet. Access would of course be restricted by security means like userids and passwords, encryption techniques etc. Q4.4 Mac & TCP/IP. Can you connect Mac and Win95 using TCP/IP? I have a Mac and Win95 machines and want to connect those two. Is it possible? How much will it cost to do that? A4.4 If both machines have Ethernet connectivity, then you have all the things you need. Both must have a Ethernet adapter and cables connecting the two. Then, get a web server or FTP server software for either computer. There are some free servers out on the Internet, check out www.shareware.com. Now that one of the computers can be a server, the other needs client software to access the server. Q4.5 Intranet on bibliography. I would like to know if and how Intranet can be used for bibliographic instruction? A4.5 If bibliographic instruction can be put on a web server, then Yes! IntraNets are the application of Internet technology to a private network. A web server just for employee use is an example. Q4.6 Configure MAC & PC.Q. How do you configure the clients of both MAC and PC running TCP/IP ? Netmask ?? 255.255.255.0 ? How about DNS ? How about IP addresses ? A4.6 This reply assumes a network with only these two computers. Netmask of 255.255.255.0 is appropriate. This mask allows 254 computers on the same network segment. You don't want it any larger and smaller would be a hassle. IP address are up to you BUT, if you pick a address that is in use on the Internet, your computer can't access a computer with the same address on the Internet. RFC 1597 recommends a address in the range of 176.16.x.x , where x is a number between 1 and 254. DNS server is not necessary for a 2 computer network, use a host file on each computer instead. An example hosts file is in the Mac's System folder and HOSTS.SAM in your windows directory. To best reply, I need to know how many computers and how are they networked now. If these computers are not connected to the Internet, use the range "RFC 1597 Private Addresses" suggests - 176.16.x.x with a netmask of 255.255.255.0 (x = 1-254). You can still uses the RFC 1597 address when you connect to the Internet. But your firewall must provide network address translation. (It's a common feature) For a medium network of computers you will need a DNS server. You can get software for Windows 3 , Win95, and WinNT to run a DNS server on a PC. Any Unix computer will run DNS also. I haven't seen DNS servers for Macs, but I haven't looked recently. Q4.7 Browsers & protocols. Does any of the Web Browsers uses protocols other than TCP/IP, like NETBUI, AppleTalk etc, for their communication between the browser and the HTTP servers? A4.7 To my knowledge, all browsers use TCP/IP as that is the protocol of the Web/Internet. You may want to post your question to the newsgroup comp.infosystems.www.browsers.misc, but first check their FAQ at http://www.boutell.com/faq/ DNS is a common protocol. Any computer with a DNS client can request DNS information from and DNS server - regardless of what kind of computers they are. Your network manager should know these details. If you are the network manager, you should start reading up on TCP/IP networking. Microsoft has some good papers on TCP/IP on their web site. Go to www.mircosoft.com and search for TCP/IP Name Resolution. DISCLAIMER-- This advice is based on common assumptions and may not be the best for your network (esp. if you have Routers or more than 200 computers). Seek the advice of professionals who will fully investigate your needs. This advice is free and is limited to a simple reply to an email request. If you need more help, reply to me and I'll send you a longer email with some detailed questions. Q4.8 Easy way to HTML conversion. As a large corporation we have hundreds of reports that are printed from our mainframe, Lan's, etc.. These reports are written in various languages and run frequently. Most corporations are interested in exploring the possibility of putting this output on their Intranet. But how would they do this without modifying every single program to wrap HTML code around it? Or somehow storing the output as an image file through some sort of driver? A4.8 We have been doing some research on similar grounds. The best I have been able to come up with so far is that some reporting tools (crystal reports, MS Access report writer etc.) are now providing an option where you can send the output to an HTML file instead of the printer. 5. Question/Answer on our Intranet exchange Q5.1 E-mail thru Intranet. Would we be able to provide e-mail services to our employees by developing an intranet? In other words, would an intranet be able to, among its many advantages, provide our company with e-mail capabilities, thus keeping us from needing to purchase a vendor e-mail package such as cc:mail? A5.1 IntraNets can include mail servers based on low cost Internet technology. To setup a IntraNet mail server first requires a server. For smaller groups this can be a PC clone with Windows, Windows NT, or a Intel based UNIX like Linux. Larger groups will need a RISC based server like a Sun, HP, or IBM Unix workstation. Two pieces of software must run on the mail server. First, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server software is required. The SMTP service communicates with other mail servers to transfer mail between mail servers. Sendmail is the most common SMTP software as it is included with most versions of Unix. Smail, and others, are available for download from the Internet for free or little cost. The second software is a Post Office Protocol (POP) server. The POP service communicates with the end user computers for reading and sending mail. Eudora Lite is the most popular of the free mail readers. However, both Netscape and Microsoft have added mail readers into their web browsers. If you desire your mail to have access to the Internet, a Internet connection is required. The Internet connection can be a leased line or a dial up connection. If mail will be your only use of a Internet connection, dial up is very attractive cost wise. Currently, this SMTP/POP mail solution does have a drawback. There is are not any directory services. It's hard to discover others addresses for mail. A web server with a list of address eases this problem. Netscape and others are working on a new standard for directory services to address this issue. Q5.2 ROI on Intranet. What experiences have you made about the costs of an intranet compared to the cost saving effect of it? in other words what is the Return on Investment (ROI) on Intranet solutions for your organization ? A5.2 To the best of our knowledge, we have not come across any solid figures on Intranet ROI. A few articles (check out the articles section on the web site) and common opinion suggests that the investment for a simple intranet startup is minimal. You can probably build a simple Intranet with a spare pentium machine running Windows NT, shareware web server software and a few other shareware components. Thus most projects do not need to justify the return on investment to begin with. Hope this helps Q5.3 Hardware for Intranet. I am trying to come up with a proposal to get my company on an intranet system. My question is what specific hardware components would I need to connect 20 or so offices in the Southeast, all in different states. Also, what should I ask the phone company to do in order to help accomplish this. A5.3 An Intranet is simply a standard Wide Area Network(WAN). The use of the term Intranet recently to describe using software developed for the Internet on your company's WAN. Web servers are an example. To setup a WAN, You will need to have some type of communications between the different sites. National ISDN or a long distance Frame Relay could be your best choice. You will have to install a router at each site. Each router would connect back to a central site over dedicated phone lines. If you are uncomfortable designing a WAN, you should seek a Network Design consultant. Be careful of the phone companies, their primary business is selling you the phone lines, not consulting. Consultants typically charge $1,000 - $1,500 a day. And a good WAN design could cost $20,000 - $40,000. I used to be a Network Design consultant at BellSouth Network Solutions (until they closed down this spring). Q5.4 CD Rom on Intranet. My company recently completed its first CD-ROM. We used Folio VIEWS software. Customers are asking if they can have it on their intranet. What do we need to do to convert this CD into a format that can be used by a corporate intranet ? Are there off the shelf tools to do this? A5.4 Folio has a Web server product for Windows NT that automatically converts Folio Views to HTML documents. Cost is about $7,000. Your clients would buy and install this web server and then could read your CD-ROM with Folio files on it. I've appended the info from Folio's web server (http://www.folio.com/) Alternatively, you could create the information as Web documents originally and distribute a free web browser for the disk. Q5.5 Intranet on paper. Where can I get a piece of software that will allow me to develop an intranet on "paper"... It would have to be RFC compliant, and allow all those IP address and domain names to be created, before one started configuring the actual software. A5.5 An IntraNet is a standard network with Internet software running on it. Any tools used to design a standard TCP/IP network will work. I use Visio for drawing and Excel to track IP addresses. Web servers (the mainstay of the Intranet) requires a little marketing type planning. Artwork and text must convey your message to your co-workers. To address some specific issues in your email: Most all networking products are RFC compliant. It's which RFC that matters. Unless you are wanting a ATM network, I wouldn't worry about the TCP/IP RFC's. You will have to register for a Domain name and IP addresses. Your Internet Service Provider can help. If you are using a firewall (a necessity!), You can use RFC 1597 private addresses and not have to worry about getting registered IP addresses. Q5.6 Quantity of servers on Intranet. We have approximately 10,000 employees, most of whom have PCs on their desk, in offices worldwide. How do we determine how many servers should be used when creating an intranet? A5.6 Here are some of the factors you can use to determine the number of servers you might need for your intranet. 1. The number of anticipated simultaneous accesses. Chances are not all 10,000 employees will be accessing your intranet at the same time. Consider the geographical factors like time zones etc and you will come up with a reasonable number of simultaneous "hits" for ex. 1500. Find out if your server can handle these hits without getting bogged down. 2. Bandwidth How much data will you be pumping through your intranet ? for bandwidth intensive data you will want to add mirror "sites" and split your load by allocating different servers to different groupes of users. Remember that if all this data is still flowing through the same network (LAN) your network might now be the bottleneck. 3. Distance How far are your users from the server ? It might be a good idea to maintain a server in ex. Asia for your employees in the area, one in Europe and one in the USA. Try and find out if employees that are farther from your server are having problems with a slow WAN link. If so, consider placing a server in that location. You will have to mirror all these servers at an off-peak time to be consistent. In summary, it is a trade off between ease of maintenance and performance. The more servers you have the more difficult it will be to maintain them but you might be able to get a better overall performance increase. Hope this helps. Q5.7 Oracle & Lotus by using intranets. Is it possible to use a relational database (Oracle or Progress) from a HTML browser and if its possible how can I do this? - Once the information is on the Web, how do you modify the HTML document. Is there a converter that allow you to use a conventional word processor? - Which software can I use to develop an Intranet? - What Lotus Notes provides that Intranet doesn't A5.7 Yes, there are many HTML front ends to SQL databases like Oracle. There are many commercial products available. Look at Oracle's web server for info. If you can write a CGI script, then you can write your own front end. All you need is for the CGI script to access the SQL database for info. Once the document is uploaded to a web server, you must either edit the file from that computer or download it to your PC. If you are using a Netscape server, Netscape Gold will allow you to edit the web page while it is still on the server. Microsoft has an assistant for MS Word that allows HTML editing. Intranet is the application of Internet technology to a private network. Any software you would use on the Internet can be used on a Intranet. The difference is who can access the data. Lotus Notes is a more robust solution. It automated the replication of data from server to server allowing each permitted site to have a local copy of the data, while keeping updates distributed. A typical Notes installation costs $20,000 US compared to $6,000 for commercial web server. A search at PC Magazine's web server should turn up a few articles. Q5.8 Retailing & intranets. I am looking for some case studies of Intranets being used in the retailing business. e.g., by Sears, Walmart, etc.. Any ideas this info can be found? A5.8 I haven't heard of any studies or reports on retailers using Web servers on their local networks. However, check the network magazine web sites (www.cmp.com www.nwfusion.com www.zdnet.com) or the New York or Wall Street papers sites. Q5.9 Designing intranets & ready-made software. We are in the business of designing and implementing Intranets for corporations in India. Recently launched products such as Netscape's Navigator Gold and Frontier's Intranet Genie are posing a major threat to businesses like ours. Do you think our perception is right or do you believe companies like ours still have a role to play? A5.9 Agreed newer products will ease the process of transition conventional systems to corporate intranets. This trend is not unlike say RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools. The idea is to remain current with these tools and use these to your benefit. Also, this is an area where newer technology is evolving daily. I would suggest moving away from solutions that are better handled by the new tools and adapt to upcoming technologies. For ex. Java based solutions or integrating with corporate databases (DataWebs) The advent of better tools is usually a matter of major concern if your these tools are doing what your consultants are doing right now. A good idea would be to explore new possibilities and retrain. Q5.10 Windows thru Intranet. I work for Xerox Corporation in the Corporate Business Forms Design and Control Department. We will soon install a Windows application that our users can run from our server over the Novell Netware network that allows them to search for and download electronic forms using titles and keywords rather that the file name which is our control number. This application is vital to our operation in that it allows our customers to easily access forms and enables us to keep track of which forms are being uses and which we can obsolete. Specifically, my question is this: Xerox has a very efficient intranet up and running, and we already have a homepage on that network. Is it possible for our customers to run the above Windows application from our PC server through a URL on our homepage without having to install the Windows software? A5.10 Here are some of the options we can suggest 1. Use CGI to act as a "pipe" between your users and your application. 2. Consider a set of Java Applets (kinda tedious process) 3. if you are dealing with files that users are looking for I would suggest putting these files on your corporate web server and use a web server search service like "Excite" . This will let your users search for files based on a set of keywords and download files as needed. Based on the limited knowledge of your needs, #3 seems like the best way to go. Q5.11 Security on intranets. Other than server authentication, what methods are there for restricting access to pages on an intranet? A5.11 You can setup a CGI script to do authentication before the same CGI script serves the page to a user. Other than the CGI script and the server itself, a firewall can do authentication before allowing a user to get to the web server. The firewall method can't restrict which pages, just which servers. Q5.12 Setting up Intranet documentsI work for a hotel chain (Sol Melia). The company has a complete set of manuals (more than 10000 pages of text and images), that describe the different procedures and ways to operate. I am thinking about introducing these manuals into our intranet. These way we would save all the money spent in paper a deliveries. For this to be operative, people would need to be able to do yahoo like search on the manuals. Another problem is that the actual files are in word format so I have to find the best way to translate them into html files My question is: which products will solve that problem (netscape suitspot, )? A5.12 Check out the microsoft web site www.microcosft.com for a Word - HTML converter. Run all your documents through this converter, save them as HTML files. To perform searches on these documents, I would suggest using the Excite Netsearch software. I believe its free for web sites. http://corp.excite.com/ews.html This should get you started. Q5.13 Setting up Intranet server capacity. I am trying to come up with a proposal to get my company on an intranet system. My question is : what INTRANET server configuration would I need to establish connection for our users through LAN or WAN. What figure or information I need to determine the server capacity? A19.There are many questions to consider for web servers: Do you have a preference for, or experience with, Unix, Windows NT, or Mac servers? How many users? How many sites? How are the sites connected (54/64K, T-1/E-1, etc..)? What data will be presented? NetScape's, MicroSoft's, Other Vendor's, or free servers? A5.13 My preference is for a Pentuim with 2GB scsi running Linux and the Apatchee Web server. Should only cost about $5,000 US. You can then grow or migrate to bigger servers from there. Q5.14 Installing TCP/IP. I am new to PC networking. I have an intranet server running Windows NT ( TCP/IP) and am connecting to our token ring Novell PC network thru Netware. Would you please tell me the best way to install(?) TCP/IP on the PC's running windows 3.1 on the Novell side so that they can access my "Intranet Server" ? A5.14 Check out Lan Workplace for Windows. Installing this will give your Windows PC TCP/IP connectivity. The package also comes with a few nice tools like ftp server, telnet, ping, talk and other tcp utilities. You will need to assign IP addresses for each machine. Q5.15 Running remote applications. I would like to know if it is possible to run an application (for instance MSword) through a web site on the intranet even though you don't have the software on your machine. If possible how do i make the link to execute the .exe file to start up the application. A5.15 Check the CGI documentation for your web server. Depending on your server software it may be possible to serve MS Word or other documents to compatible browsers. You may also be able to execute a binary file through the CGI gateway and pipe the results back to the browser. Microsofts ActiveX technology claims to allow Internet Explorer users to view and modify documents created by Microsoft Word, Excel and few other applications. Q5.16 Intranet & Internet. Can an Intranet be designed entirely within the Internet with only password protected pages, or firewalls, separating the intranet from the internet? Or is a simple intranet network better? A5.16 Yes, intranets and the internet can certainly coexist. In fact theoretically your entire intranet could be located at a remote site and your users can access the data using secure links. Cutting off your intranet from the outside world physically has its own advantages. The main advantage being a higher level of security. The down side is that if your organization has remote locations you will have to figure out some way of letting them in. Q5.17 Server Capability. If 100 computers are on the network, what should be the capabilities of the "server"? A5.17 This is certainly a FAQ. Unfortunately the number of users of computers on an intranet is not enough to judge the requirements. Consider the network traffic and type of applications required. You can start small. Maybe with a fast pentium or UNIX box. Make sure you have enough RAM (32 MB min) and plenty of disk space. I would prefer a system that is easily upgradable as the load increases. You should be able to add extra RAM or a hard drive or maybe even pop in an extra CPU as your needs grow. Q5.18 Files to HTML conversion. what do you recommend as the best software on the market to convert files to web based design (HTML)? Is it better to convert it manually? Run it through specialized software (i.e. MS) or have generic design software? A5.18 I haven't come across a generic solution for converting ANY kind of file to HTML. More and more vendors are providing a plug in utility for conversion. Unless a better solution is available out there, the best options right now would be to convert these files as they are updated. If anyone out there is aware of a generic software solution to convert files to HTML on the fly please let us know. Q5.19 Intranet - Is it really necessary ? I have heard and read about the Intranet and am aware of some of the advantages of the Intranet. My question is that can the Intranet be of any use to my organization and how so? I would be glad if you could give me any information regarding this. A5.19 To find out if an intranet solution would benefit your organization over your current setup try asking yourself these questions. 1. Can all my users get to all the data and services using a web browser ? 2. Is access to data restricted to certain types of workstations or operating systems ? ex. only Windows or Macintosh machines ? 3. Can remote locations access this information easily using an internet connection and a web browser ? 4. Are you tied down to a proprietary solution for conferencing, email, document sharing etc ? 5. What are the costs to deploy client-server applications and train users ? Hope this helps to get you started. Q5.20 Intranet - leveling of cultural differences. I am looking for a company with an experience that would pertain to an intranet's leveling of cultural differences within an organization. Would you have run across any examples of this ? Cultures: in relation to this topic could mean nationalities or any other corporate subgroups. A5.20 We haven't come across any such report or a company with such experience. WE would be happy to post this to the web site and keep you posted on the responses. Q5.21 AS400 db. I'm wondering if there is a solution to tie an AS400 db into an Intranet. A5.21 Yes. We found a few links to AS400 solution providers at http://www.mbauman.com/inter.htm. Q5.22 SQL read only queries on Intranet. We have a multi-protocol WAN that uses TCP/IP as the top layer protocol. We need to submit SQL read-only queries against a simple table. The table (file) is presently located on our MVS host. Is there an Intranet solution that would help us build this application, hopefully cheaper and faster than a traditional application? A5.22 There are many web to SQL toolkits out there. What is the web server? A Unix box? And what server software? Netscape? What is the SQL database? Oracle? Each database vendor is addressing web access, Each web server vendor is looking in to database access. If CGI programming is more your style, there are many Perl and C libraries for SQL. Your DBA or Webmaster should have access to these tools.