Infrastructure technologies lie at the core of your eBusiness solution. As you learned in the previous module, infrastructure technologies act as the foundation upon which all other eBusiness services are built. One of the most important infrastructure technologies is networking. Why? It enables computers (and thus people) to share information across physically disparate computers and networks.
This module focuses on the various infrastructure technologies that make eBusiness viable. By the end of this module, you will be able to do the following:

1. Describe the overall importance of networking to eBusiness
   
2. Describe the functions of LANs and WANs
   
3. Distinguish among the Internet, VPNs, intranets, and extranets
   
4. Describe the functions of switches, bridges, and routers
   
5. Describe Internet multicasting

The next lesson demonstrates the overall importance of networking to eBusiness.