The following chapter is a preliminary draft of material that will appear in expanded form in the next edition of the Windows NT Server Resource Kit. At that time, the case study will be further revised and expanded to include details about the Divisional, Department, and Desktop server services and other helpful information.
In the early days of networking, there was only one type of network and operating system. Communication was not an issue: When the computers were connected, they communicated. It was relatively slow and very expensive, but it worked.
Today, corporate computer environments are often heterogeneous, that is, they have at least two different network operating systems on their standards list that must interoperate with both newer, intranet client/server environments and legacy computers and applications.
As network administrators attempt to make these systems work together, they find that the different network operating systems do not "speak" the same standard protocols and that there may be non-standard or proprietary protocols in use in various parts of their networks. They need to discover ways to connect these networks together, enabling them to interoperate and complement each other.
To illustrate problems and solutions for interoperability, we put together a real network for a fictitious company we call "Terra Flora, Incorporated." We imagined this company to be an international corporation in the floral industry. Terra Flora will serve as an example of a company with heterogeneous networks and of how to devise and implement a plan to bring these information systems together in a way that is consistent with the company's business operations and objectives.
Terra Flora is a totally fictitious corporation. The names of companies, products, people, characters, and data mentioned herein are fictitious and are in no way intended to represent any real individual, company, product, or event, unless otherwise noted.