Access
to the Internet is rapidly becoming a necessity in today’s business
environment. Internet access at my business enables workers to perform a wide
variety of tasks, from seeing what the competition is doing to formalizing
procedures and finding solutions from others who have experienced the same
technical problems. The benefits of Internet access is limitless. Employees can
be actively involved in their tasks at hand while waiting for an e-mail response
to an important question or section of an important joint task. E-mail is used
extensively and has become such an important tool that it is in many cases
replacing the Postal System. Why pay such high prices, and then wait for several
days for the information, presentation or important documentation that you need
when you can have it instantly. This new electronic means of communication has
had a definite negative impact on the Postal Systems profits, but it has boosted
the speed by which we conduct business to match the tempo of today’s business
world. Another benefit of the Internet is FTP, or File Transfer Protocol. FTP
refers to one of the protocols within the protocol suite used on the Internet.
The File Transfer Protocol makes it possible to transfer files from one computer
(called the “host” ) on the Internet to another. A user of an FTP program
must log in to both hosts in order to transfer a file from one to the other. It
is common for a user with files on more than one host to use the FTP program to
transfer files from one host to another. In this case, the user has an account
on both hosts involved, so he has passwords for both hosts. An additional
benefit of Internet access is Offline web browsing. This software is loaded on
your computer and allows you to download sites to your hard drive for local
viewing. The benefits are obvious, the first being speed. Many sites on the web
containing large graphic files that are slow to download and actually waste time
because your computer is rendered useless while you wait for them. There are
also image maps, audio, video and other multimedia objects that take forever to
reach your computer. This is where the advantages of Off-line browsing come into
play. You can easily share web based information with your coworkers without
waiting for pages to download. The concept is ideal for corporate presentations
- all the pages you need to demonstrate are stored locally for instant access.
The most obvious benefit is that you don't need to be connected to the Internet
in order to browse your favorite sites. If you happen to have an internet
service plan that charges by the hour, you can download a site very quickly,
then peruse it offline at your own leisurely pace. In conclusion, Internet
access in my business is a required tool that is utilized to continually provide
better service to our clients. The Internet allows us to immediately obtain and
trade information that is of mutual benefit to both individual tasks and
corporate ventures. The internet has become an integral part of our daily
business life. Should we loose this capability, our success and marketability
would immediately suffer because we would loose our market edge.