Expository Essay – Electronic Communication Media : Internet, Intranet, Extranet

Communication is an important part of human interactions. This explains why many organizations have fully-fledged departments that solely take care of the communication aspects of the entire organization. Technological advancements have evolved the communication strategies employed by organizations. It is possible to find a single company making use of a myriad of communication strategies depending on the needs and how fast the information is required to be conveyed. The use of email services and other electronic media in the office is widespread today. This paper elaborates on such electronic media as the internet, intranet, and extranet. It also highlights on the protocols that govern each of them for effective application.

The internet is one of the most significant technological inventions ever made as far as communication is concerned. It makes it possible for millions of people to communicate from different parts of the world. The internet uses the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or the TCP/IP. These are a set of protocols that dictates how the communication channel between different sets of distant computers are to communicate. The protocol provides end-to-end connectivity, which states how information is to be packaged, transmitted, and received at the intended destination. Other technological evolutions have resulted from the development of the internet and the large-scale fashion in which it can be applied. There is no argument that the intranet and extranet are the products of the internet.

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The intranet has been extensively adopted by many organizations. This has been done in different forms and varieties. The intranet is developed using the World Wide Web and is meant to serve as a private network. It is a network that provides restricted communication or local communication services (Fink, 2015). The protocols that guide the intranet are the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTPP) and the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. The private network of this nature is commonly used to provide restricted access to an organization’s workers only. The computers within the organization run interconnected applications that provide synced information to all workers. The integrity of the communication system is fully secured by the use of a firewall. This system makes it cheap to share information and allows the company to save on a lot of money that would be used in other communication strategies.

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Extranet, on the other hand, can be viewed as an extended form of the intranet that gives controlled access to outside partners of an organization (Barnier et al., 2016). The basic structure of the extranet is that of the intranet. However, extranet allows others that are outside the organization to access the company’s intranet networking services. These outsiders could be customers, suppliers, and vendors, among others. In this kind of relationship, the network allows for a closer relationship between an organization and those that provide necessary outside services to the company. In addition to all the benefits of an intranet network, the extranet can be of special importance for a company that has extensively traveling workforce. The protocols that the extranet runs on are the same as that of an intranet system. In conclusion, it is clear that electronic communication media has gained much traction and application today. The internet forms the foundation of most communication strategies in many organizations. The internet can be used in a variety of ways and provides both distant and near communication. The intranet is used within an organization, while extranet can be extended to outside partners of an organization.

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