The i-Planet Gateway

The i-Planet gateway forms the boundary between the Internet and the intranet. It has two main responsibilities:

1. It acts as the border guard, establishing identity and allowing access.

2. It also acts as a translator, altering documents served so that links to the intranet content will work on the extranet.

In general, networks "inside" your i-Planet gateway can be considered secure, internal networks, that is your intranet. Networks outside the i-Planet gateway (that is, the Internet) are not secure, and access from those networks must be closely controlled, through encryption and authentication. The i-Planet gateway component provides this control.

To accomplish these goals, the i-Planet gateway relies on three subsystems.

1. Server subsystem--Listens for network connections and assigns resources to process these requests.

2. Connection handler subsystem--Does the actual processing of the requests. It translates and transmits the response back to the client.

3. Authentication and profile subsystem--Handles authorization, authentication, and profile information for the gateway.

The i-Planet gateway also runs the optional i-Planet firewall application that is included with the i-Planet software. Although it is not required for baseline operation of the i-Planet product, it provides greater security.