ernet were called intranets. It was only a matter of time until companies realized that some external users could also have legit- imate access to parts of a corporate network. For instance, key suppliers could be granted access to their OEM customer's inventory status databases and help adapt the shipment dates to support a just- in-time (JIT) philosophy. Customers might need to log into specific customer support systems and probe for frequently asked questions or report problems. Companies called these networks extranets. 17. Amit Shah, G. Ramakrishnan, and Akrishan Ram, FDDI: A High Speed Network (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice- Hall, 1993). Downloaded from Digital Engineering Library @ McGraw-Hill (www.digitalengineeringlibrary.com) Copyright © 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies. All rights reserved. Any use is subject to the Terms of Use as given at the website. THE EVOLUTION OF NETWORK TECHNOLOGY: DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING AND THE CONVERGENCE OF NETWORKS 14 NETWORK PROCESSORS Information flowing back and forth suddenly made for a more efficient economy in a way that would have been absolutely unthinkable only 5 to 10 years ago. IP TELEPHONY In the case of telephony, the deregulation of the carriers first in North America and soon thereafter in other parts of the world enabled newcomers to enter the market. These were mostly startups that mas- tered all technological aspects of the new network fabric. They were poised to offer very competitive services. This placed a tremendous financial pressure on the traditional transmission technologies, as companies that had always deployed them in their business model could not be economically sus- tained without some sort of government intervention. If a new-generation carrier using IP technolo- gies could offer connectivity for a fraction of the cost of the older guard carriers, why would someone continue doing business with the traditional telephony carriers? In addition to the privileged capability of efficiently handling data transfers, the new network was also 