o Saves employee time—time lost in phone tag, lost messages, and they three day time delay of surface mail.
o Avoids circuitous means of transfering data like printing a document, faxing it, and then rekeyboarding the data at the receiving end
o Allows businesses and individuals to self-publish, and distribute their work efficiently, whether or not the text or the graphical appearance is primary.
o Provides access to information, allows communication and distribution of documents in a single, uniform fashion.
It should also be clear that Internetworking is not yet a smooth, easily learned process. It requires knowledge and skills that are not presently taught anywhere except on the Internet itself.
The next section discusses specific needs of different segments of people. The final section contains a fairly systematic exposition of the methods and skills needed to Internetwork effectively. But far from representing these sections as the last word on the subject, I would like to stress that the only way to learn Internetworking is through undirected exploration of the Internet.
This means you have to let your employees play, at least on their own time: play with programs, play with Anonymous FTP, and play with Usenet news. None of these activities are directly productive, but the playing pays off when you need a new program and someone in your office can
o pick the right Usenet newsgroup and retrieve its FAQ
o read the FAQ and learn about free software that will solve your
problem and where to find the latest version
o connect to the software archive and (correctly) transfer the
program—even though the intervening machine is of the "wrong" make.