by Max Airborne, special to SunSoft Catalyst
It's no secret that the Internet is the place to be. Businesses
large and small, students and teachers, consumers, kids and political
activists use the Internet to purchase or provide goods and services,
entertain themselves, perform research, find a recipe or a train
schedule, and communicate with friends, customers and business partners
throughout the world.
The Internet, however, can be a very painful thing. The hassles of setting up Internet severs are infamous. That's leaves most of us with a real -- often urgent -- need to get connected, but few reliable means to get online. The Netra Internet Server, from Sun Microsystems, Inc., has finally put an end to that dilema.
Touted by Sun as the first plug-and-play Internet server on the market, the Netra is receiving praise from customers and reviewers alike. Calling the Netra the best-integrated Web server on the market, PC Magazine recently gave it an Editor's Choice award to the Netra -- beating out major competitors from Silicon Graphics (SGI), Intergraph, and Digital Equipment (DEC). Although Sun has dominated the Unix server and workstation market for years, the Netra Internet Server inspired Sun's first major endorsements from the PC publishing world.
Indeed, the Netra is something of a Jack of all trades among Internet servers. Plug it in, launch Netscape and fill out a few forms. That's it. Not only can all of your PC LAN clients surf the Web and receive email, but your Web site (provided you've made one) is up and ready for thousands upon thousands of hits per day. The Netra comes preconfigured with all the necessary software and hardware to connect LANs to the Internet and act as a World Wide Web, email, and ftp server, with optional news server capability. You configure and administer the Netra through an HTML-based graphical interface that uses Netscape Navigator. And the configuration forms you'll find through Netscape don't mimic arcane Unix configuration files; the forms are (almost) plain English. It's about as painless as possible.
Don't take our word for it. The Netra "far exceeded our expectations," said Dick Collier, MIS Director of Manufacturers Services Limited (MSL). "Installation required powering it up, entering our IP address and domain name, and then it just ran. It's the first literally plug-and-play unit I've ever seen. And it's so reliable everyone forgets it's there. It just sits in the corner and cranks away." MSL acquires cost-inefficient electronics manufacturing plants from major corporations and transforms them into profitable contract manufacturing enterprises. Its Web site (www.manserve.com) lists product announcements and job openings.
The recent explosive growth of the Internet as a venue for commerce has pushed many businesses into a whole new arena -- self-publishing. Companies are scrambling to make their products available on the Web, and newspaper and magazine publishers are putting the content of their paper (and in some cases, formerly paper) publications online. The Netra provides the first realistic do-it-yourself option for businesses that can't afford to hire contract Web services or new IS staff.
According to Jeremy Sliver, Virgin Music's director of media affairs, "The sooner you start building a Web presence the better, as one day every company will be on the Web. With your own in-house server you can monitor the feedback from your users instantly." Virgin, one of the world's best-known record companies, uses the Internet to disseminate sound and video clips (www.vmg.co.uk).
Prudential Connecticut Realty, one of the top 25 real estate companies in the U.S., put its real-estate listings on the Web with a Netra ( www.realtyview.com). Prudential is now projecting "a 30 percent increase in total house sales for this year," said Robert Bakken, Prudential's chief operating officer. "Putting our real estate listings on the Web has created more excitement, greater anticipation, and more acceptance from our sales people than any other initiative we have ever done. It really differentiates us in the marketplace. It is something that clearly offers competitive advantage for level of service."
It's not just Internet neophytes who value the Netra. It saved the day during the November 1994 U.S. state and national elections when the Electric Examiner, the Internet publication of the San Francisco Examiner, had an unprecedented number of people trying to access the Examiner to get online election results. The Examiner's Internet Access Provider, GeoNet, moved the Examiner's Web site to a new Netra, increasing the site's access capacity by nearly five times. "We knew that our original on-line systems were overloaded and that many users were unable to log on and read late-breaking news," said Chris Gulker, the Electric Examiner's business manager. "But we had no idea how much demand there was until the Sun Netra Internet Server logged more than 130,000 accesses in two days. We like the Netra so much we've purchased a system and made it a permanent part of the Electric Examiner infrastructure."
Other Netra users include the Open University, which offers classes on the Web, allowing students and professors to communicate without regard for time zones and individual schedules ( www.openu.edu); Sprint/United Data Services ( www.sprintlink.net); ESPN/Starwave, which publishes the ESPNET Sportzone, Mr. Showbiz, and Outside Online ( www.starwave.com); La Scala Theatre in Milan, Italy ( lascala.milano.it); the City of Chicago's Chicago Mosaic Project, an effort to improve communication among citizens, community groups and local government ( www.ci.chi.il.us); Quest Technologies, which sells all manner of official NFL merchandise ( allsports.questtech.com/nfl/store.html); and the Simpsons, Matt Groenig's successful cartoon TV series, where users took advantage of Java to solve the mystery of "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" (www.springfield.com).
Let's have a look at what's inside that makes the Netra so unique.
The Netra Internet Server, based on the MicroSPARCII RISC chip and the Solaris 2.4 operating system, is available as either the Workgroup Server, designed for small businesses and small Web sites, or the Department Server, a multi-processing unit suitable for large departments and Web sites churning out more than 500,000 transactions per day, as well as for CPU-intensive applications such as news servers. The entry-level configuration includes 16 megabytes memory, 1.05 gigabyte disk capacity, and support for a variety of network connections, including ISDN, HSI, Frame Relay, FDDI, ATM, and Token Ring. See the Netra home page for more information ( http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hw/servers/netra.html).
Software pre-installed on the Netra includes:
Whether you've been managing Internet services for years or you're new the Web, Netra gives you the one thing you need most: The time to worry about the rest of your job and forget about your Internet server.
URL: http://kaiser/mark/instant.html
March 6, 1996