Once on the Interstate (Internet), You Can Go Anywhere

Once on the Interstate (Internet), You Can Go Anywhere

Chapters 14 and 15 compared WANs to the interstate several times. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) builds the interstates, and companies can transport goods using the roads; you can go visit grandma or do anything you wantas long as you obey the rules of the road. But the individual businesses that use the roads obviously don't build the roads.

The same general idea applies to WANs and the telephone company (telco). A company can't run a cable between two far-away buildings for legal and practical reasons. But the telco already has the ability to let you connect to its network physically, and then deliver the data over its network to the other office building. However, with WAN links, the telco allows two sites to communicate. With Frame Relay, many sites can communicate, but they all must use the same Frame Relay service from the same telco.

Now, take that same concept of having a provider of WAN servicethe people I've been calling the telcoand apply it to the Internet. A company can connect to the Internet, typically with a WAN link or with Frame Relay. With that one physical connection, that company gains access to a huge number of people (literally billions of people) who also have access to the Internet. Figure 16-1 shows the basic idea.