Extranet vs Intranet
Relationship between extranets and intranets:
An intranet is a private, internal network accessible only to an organization’s employees, while an extranet extends limited access to external partners, vendors, or customers to collaborate and share information securely.
Why is the relationship between extranets and intranets important?
An extranet is important in relation to an intranet because it extends the secure communication and collaboration capabilities of an intranet to external stakeholders such as partners, vendors, and customers, thereby enhancing business efficiency and fostering stronger external relationships.
- An extranet is a private network that uses Internet protocols, network connectivity, and possibly the public telecommunication system to securely share part of an organization’s information or operations with suppliers, vendors, partners, customers or other businesses.
- An extranet can be viewed as part of a company’s Intranet that is extended to users outside the company (e.g.: normally over the Internet). It has also been described as a “state of mind” in which the Internet is perceived as a way to do business with a preapproved set of other companies business-to-business (B2B), in isolation from all other Internet users. In contrast, business-to-consumer (B2C) involves known server(s) of one or more companies, communicating with previously unknown consumer users.
- Briefly, an extranet can be understood as a private intranet mapped onto the Internet or some other transmission system not accessible to the general public, but is managed by more than one company’s administrator(s). For example, military networks of different security levels may map onto a common military radio transmission system that never connects to the Internet.
- .Any private network mapped onto a public one is a virtual private network (VPN). In contrast, an intranet is a VPN under the control of a single company’s administrator(s).
An argument has been made that “extranet” is just a buzzword for describing what institutions have been doing for decades, that is, interconnecting to each other to create private networks for sharing information. - One of the differences that characterized an extranet, however, is that its interconnections are over a shared network rather than through dedicated physical lines
With respect to Internet Protocol networks, RFC 4364 states “If all the sites in a VPN are owned by the same enterprise, the VPN is a corporate intranet. If the various sites in a VPN are owned by different enterprises, the VPN is an extranet.
A site can be in more than one VPN; e.g., in an intranet and several extranets. We regard both intranets and extranets as VPNs. In general, when we use the term VPN we will not be distinguishing between intranets and extranets. Even if this argument is valid, the term “extranet” is still applied and can be used to eliminate the use of the above description.”
It is important to note that in the quote above from RFC 4364, the term “site” refers to a distinct networked environment. Two “sites” connected to each other across the public Internet backbone comprise a VPN. The term “site” does not mean “website.” Further, “intranet” also refers to just the web-connected portions of a “site.” Thus, a small company in a single building can have an “intranet,” but to have a VPN, they would need to provide tunneled access to that network for geographically distributed employees.
Similarly, for smaller, geographically united organizations, “extranet” is a useful term to describe selective access to intranet systems granted to suppliers, customers, or other companies. Such access does not involve tunneling, but rather simply an authentication mechanism to a web server. In this sense, an “extranet” designates the “private part” of a website, where “registered users” can navigate, enabled by authentication mechanisms on a “login page”.
An extranet requires security and privacy. These can include firewalls, server management, the issuance and use of digital certificates or similar means of user authentication, encryption of messages, and the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) that tunnel through the public network.
Many technical specifications describe methods of implementing extranets, but often never explicitly define an extranet. RFC 3547 presents requirements for remote access to extranets. RFC 2709 discusses extranet implementation using IPSec and advanced network address translation (NAT).