Public and Private Web Servers

• You put up a public web server to provide information to the world of Internet users.

• Anyone with a web browser and an Internet connection can attach to a public web site.

• You build a private web server as part of an intranet strategy to provide information to authorized users within an organization.

• A firewall is a server or router that puts restrictions on who can access a server or an internal network. It is an integral part of an extranet strategy.

• You need a firewall to keep untrusted users from the Internet out of your internal LAN.

• Internal users can access both the private and the public web servers.

• Another strategy is to make your public web server a stand-alone machine that is only connected to the Internet and is completely isolated from any internal networks.

The public server provides three important features:

1. Information to external Internet users,

2. A firewall to prevent external users from accessing systems on the internal LAN,

3. A gateway that lets internal LAN users access the Internet through a single secure connection.

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