On Wed, 29 Nov 1995, Peter Galloway wrote:
> > I know this might seem a little off topic, but I guess that most of
> > you have faced this before.
> >
> > I've seen discussions on this list about the reasons to implement a
> > firewall, however, what about the reasons to connect in the first
> > place? Why a large company, who can pay for a `private network'
> > chooses to go via Internet instead?
> >
> > I'm preparing a presentation regarding this and your comments will be
> > welcome. I plan on citing selected parts (w/o the author if you wish)
> > and elaborating on each reason. If there's enough interest I'll post a
> > summary of the answers.
> >
Hello
To add to the list of following reasons why a company would use the internet.
1. FAULT TOLERANCE
Companies with private nets usually can't afford, or won't dedicate
resources to duplicate their links. If a particular router is 'Having a
bad day', this can bring their link down for hours to days. On the
otherhand, Desert Storm discovered it was difficult to bring down the
Iraq communication grid due to the versitility of off the shelf dynamic
routers re-establishing the connections on the fly.
2. Third Party communications.
For co-operative ventures, it is not practical to extend a private link
connection for a limited period.
3. Advertising presence.
Instead of spending $$$ on Junk Mail sendings, a company can post a
hot-link on a few key yellow pages sites, and have people (with education
and technical backgrounds) flock to their site. The explosive growth of
the Web is proof of this. Also technical support via E-Mail is less
expensive the live phone support, and quicker the conventional paper mail.
4. Private Nets are not as private as they use to be.
Very Large companies, (e.g. IBM) are using the spare bandwidth of their
nets to provide services to other companies. Potentially, this exposes
users to the same intrusion problems as the public net. (only in this
case, there is a central authority to complain too). And in the case of
truly private nets, when the Value of Data on the Net is a order of
magnitude greater then the average salery of someone working on the net,
there is the still the 'malicious insider' problem that would still
require the presence of FireWalls and Guard technology to control.
Leonard Miyata
aka leonard @
geminisecure .
com
References:
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