Scenario: Outsourcing of Extranets

 

An exemplary scenario - which this paper is based on - is a car manufacturer (customer) which enables all its dealers (more than 1000) to use special applications within its corporate network (CN) (e.g., Online Ordering of cars). The dealers build a so called extranet (EN). Besides the specific applications the EN enables connections to the worldwide Internet. The provider implements the EN infrastructure with all the demanded services on the customers behalf. It is also responsible for the management of the extranet with all services it offers. It has to be remarked that the provider is not responsible for applications offered by the customer.

[Extranet Solution for a Car Manufacturer]Extranet Solution for a Car Manufacturer  [l]The corresponding infrastructure is presented in figure . Dealers are connected with a Point of Presence (PoP) of the provider over leased lines or ISDN dial-up lines. They form a virtual private network (VPN) on top of the infrastructure of the provider, which is also used by other customers. In the Service Area (SA) of the provider reside servers for the services rendered by the provider (e.g. Mail, DNS, Authentication ) and a well defined access point to the Internet. If a dealer wants to use a service of the manufacturer it will be routed into the SA of the car manufacturer. In this configuration dealers use services both in the SA of the provider and in the SA of the customer.