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What is Extranet

What is Extranet?

Extranet is one of the types of private networks which make use of internet technology and other telecommunication methods and different kind of systems in order to communicate and share the private and confidential data to the vendors associated with the partners, customers, business firms and other collaborating companies. We can say that extranet is the extended version of the intranet. The main purpose of this technology is to let the outsiders for the firm to communicate with the organization as when required.

How extranet works
Extranet is the extension of the intranet .the only difference is that intranet doesn’t allows external organizations and companies to see the data available online of the typical firm but in extranet people form ten outside environment such as users, suppliers customers and external stakeholders. It’s a wide form of intranet. Extranet use the same protocols as intranet for the sake of data sharing and communication through web with little enhanced security and privacy.

Usage of extranet

Leading business organizations are using extranet different purposes some of them are listed below.

Companies use extranet for selling and purchasing of their products and services online.
They can share large amount of data for collaborating by using the electronic means such as electronic data exchange.
For sharing immediate catalogs for the products with the wholesalers and other individuals involved in trading.
To develop new plans for the future concern of the business with other organizations and joint companies.
Online training programs are one of the important tasks that companies get done with the help of extranet.
If company is dealing as the group of companies for the maximization of the profits then extranet acts as the typically technology to be used in providing the access to the concerned stakeholders while remaining in the online collaboration for instance Banking activities online on the behalf of the business affiliates and associates.
Companies can share important news and circulars with the partners or joint venture teams instantly by the means of extranet.

Dependencies and lacking
Extranet is very useful from the corporate point of view but there are certain things that needs to be managed when using extranet.

Extranet need more secure and private environment then intranet because external organizations of all types can be related to the business on timely basis .usually high management is required for providing the digital certificates to the authenticated users to give them the required or complete access.
Firewall serve management is also required in authentication process.
Encryption of message is another important challenge in the extranet different encryption techniques are used for this purpose. The main reason for encryption here is the protection of data from being accessed by unfair identities.
Large data management is also required .data transfer at the accurate speed and reliable bandwidth is also managed to enhance the network capability.
In extranet VPN technology virtual private networking tools and techniques are used for tunneling to precede the communication and file sharing straight through the broad public networks without identifying the tunneling threats. For this purpose different kind of network security methods are used to prevent the data from the online threats during the tunneling process.

Future Perception
Extranet is the wider term when compared to the intranet. But is usefulness and wide range makes it’s very good to be sued by purely online business firms. Advanced working techniques and security snippets can make the extranet more secure and wider in range .it can be seen at the remarkable level in the online trading world in future