What are other businesses doing?

Following are three examples of types of connections used by different businesses:

• A regional restaurant chain transfers sales data, inventory orders, price changes and software updates nightly between each restaurant and the central office. Because the cost of a WAN is prohibitive, the chain uses modems over standard phone lines to connect their remote and local SCO UNIX systems.

• A small software developer uses commercial software to develop information systems for retail stores. They maintain a PPP connection between a PC and a local Internet access provider to receive software and technical updates for their development tools.

• A Fortune 500 company joins its central headquarters with field sales offices and manufacturing facilities. TCP/IP is the backbone of their network connections but each remote site has its own needs and its own computer systems. Some older sales offices use DOS-based PCs, others have been upgraded to Microsoft Windows-based PCs on a local-area network. The manufacturing facilities use Sun, HP and IBM workstations. Most of the field sales offices connect to the main office by modem, while the manufacturing facilities connect via TCP/IP over T1 lines.