ABSTRACT
Extranets have been around as long as the first rudimentary LAN-to-LAN networks began connecting two different business entities together to form WANs. In its basic form, an extranet is the interconnection of two previous separate LANs or WANs with origins from different business entities. This term emerged to differentiate between the previous definitions of external “Internet” connection and just a company’s internal intranet. Exhibit 1 depicts an extranet as a Venn diagram, where the intersection of two (or more) nets form the extranet. The network in this intersection was previously part of the “intranet” and has now been made accessible to external parties.
