2. Intranet

An intranet has almost the same services as the wider Internet, but it is a private system. It is only accessible to authorised people within the organisation.

An intranet can over a local area network (LAN) where only staff in the same building or locality can use it. Or it can run over a wide area network (WAN) where staff from around the world can log in.

An example intranet is shown below:

This intranet for a university is offering many services that are only available to their students. No one on the web can access or use this page because they require the login details.

Commercial companies offer their own particular services for their employees. For example, an intranet for a building society might have a section explaining the different types of savings products. Staff can refer to these pages as a reference guide. There might be a page with links to important documents or templates. There might be another section which lists all of the internal telephone numbers and email addresses of every member of staff. And there might be an area that publishes details of social events e.g. the staff Christmas party.