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"I've got the Internet on one computer, and I want all the
other computers on my network to have access"
You've seen the Internet (perhaps through a standalone copy of
the ANT Internet Suite), you've decided your school needs
it, but you need to know how to give all your other computers
access to it. You need the ANT Internet Server Suite.
Here's why:
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Modem sharing |
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The ANT Internet Server Suite allows you to connect every
computer on your network to the Internet, using just one
modem. The server programs run on the computer with the
modem (the server computer), and forward requests from
all the others (the client computers) out through the
modem onto the Internet.
Of course, it all works just the same if you've got an
ISDN line (with a terminal adaptor) instead of a modem. Also,
the ANT Internet Server Suite works with all the same
Internet Service Providers as our award-winning ANT Internet
Suite:, providing coverage all over the world.
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How it works |
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We'll use the example of web access here, but other
Internet services work similarly. Have a look at the diagram.
 When a user, sitting at a
client computer on your network, running ANT
Fresco®, requests a web page, the request travels over
your network to the server computer (1). The server computer
then accesses the Internet through its modem (2). When it receives
a response through the modem (3), it sends the information
back over your network (4)
to the client computer running Fresco, where it is displayed.
This setup is called a web proxy, as the server is
asking for pages on the client's behalf.
In fact, the server computer need not use the
modem link for each web page request. Every time a page is
fetched, the server keeps a copy in a cache on its own
hard disc: if another client later asks for the same page, it
will be handed the copy from the cache (thus skipping the
time-consuming steps 2 and 3). Such a caching web
proxy can dramatically reduce use of the modem, and thus
reduce phone bills for your Internet connection.
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Email and discussion (news)
groups |
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As well as a web proxy, the ANT Internet Server Suite
contains a mail server and a server for Internet discussion
groups known as newsgroups, or Usenet news, or
just news.
The mail (and news) servers provide broadly the same kind
of advantage as a web
proxy: all your client computers connect to your server
computer to receive email (or news), and the server collects
it
together and sends it off onto the Internet in large batches.
Email (or news) arriving from outside is correspondingly
un-batched and
delivered to your users' email in-trays (or local
newsgroups).
But additionally, because it's a
server in its own right, the ANT Internet Server Suite
can deliver mail from user to user without that mail ever
leaving your network, and it can also run local newsgroups
which aren't accessible except from your network. For more
details about this type of setup, called an Intranet,
see the section
Using the server suite to host an
Intranet.
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