Wikis on the Company LAN

From Baruchnewmedia

1 Wikis and LANs: A Brief Definition and History
2 Creating a Wiki on a LAN
3 Companies Utilizing Wikis on LANs
4 Examples of Wikis
5 References
6 External Links

Wikis and LANs: A Brief Definition and History

The Wiki

Wikipedia defines the term wiki as software that allows users to collaboratively create, edit, link, and organize the content of a website, usually for reference material. ^[1] The term wiki, which means “quick”, was inspired by the transit bus line at the Honolulu International Airport. ^[2]

The first wiki was created in 1995 by Smalltalk developer Ward Cunningham. He conceived the wiki as a quick way to create and share ideas when working. ^[3] Cunningham's initial wiki site is still available for utilization by people seeking information primarily regarding software development. The following is the link for his wiki site: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiHistory

Currently, Wikipedia is the largest wiki and as of January 2008, the English version of Wikipedia contains over 2,172,800 articles that were revised over 193,207,500 times. ^[4]

The LAN

A local area network (LAN) is a group of computers and associated devices that share a common communications line or wireless link. Typically, connected devices share the resources of a single processor or server within a small geographic area (for example, within an office building). Usually, the server has applications and data storage that are shared in common by multiple computer users. A local area network may serve as few as two or three users (for example, in a home network) or as many as thousands of users. ^[5]

The first LAN put into service occurred in 1964 at the Livermore Laboratory to support atomic weapons research. LANs spread to the public sector in the late 1970s and were used to create high-speed links between several large central computers at one site. The development of personal computers meant that a single site began to have dozens or even hundreds of computers. The initial attraction of networking these was generally to share disk space and laser printers, which were both very expensive at the time. ^[6]

--Mkomal 13:36, 8 May 2008 (CDT)

Creating a Wiki on a LAN

The basis of creating a wiki on a Local Area Network within a company is outlined below.

Consider implementing a wiki on a company LAN if:

You want to establish a company intranet quickly and cheaply without sacrificing functionality, security, or durability.
You want to publish a range of corporate documents in one universally accessible location and let employees manage those documents with a minimum of effort, lag, and risk of redundancy.
You want to manage and organize meeting notes, team agendas, and company calendars.
You need a project management tool that is cheap (if not free), extensible, and accessible through any Web browser.
You need a central location where shared documents can be viewed and revised by a large and/or dispersed team.

A wiki used on a Company LAN usually includes information which is usable by individuals who are directly involved in the project or assignment for which the Wiki was originally established. The link below is a wiki for the 19th Large Installation System Administration Conference of 2005 (LISA).

[1]

Companies Utilizing Wikis on LANs

LAN Party

A LAN party is a temporary, sometimes spontaneous, gathering of people together with their computers, which they network together primarily for the purpose of playing multiplayer computer games. ^[7]

This kind of activity uses a LAN to connect many different users that can range from a hundred to a thousand people using their computer to connect with each other in a chatting or gaming environment.

By: Johnny Jailall

Quakeworld

Quake's network code, the part of the software that handles multiplayer gaming over a network, was designed for low-latency play over a LAN. The original Quake did not address the fact that Internet connections have generally much higher latency and packet loss compared to a LAN connection, and for most people, performance was poor. ^[8]

Quake is a gaming environment and actually a game that uses the LAN network for gameplay between different user. The use of LAN uses more higher speed connections in online games for less lagging and delay.

By: Johnny Jailall

Adtran

ADTRAN develops network products and services that simplify access to communications networks. ^[9]

Adtran itself specializes in internetworking and this helps businesses implement high speed connectivity between users when their employees have to use video conferencing and share different information. Different companies itself share valuable information and they need the highest and best possible speeds on connectivity to use.

By: Johnny Jailall

DreamHack

DreamHack is a LAN party, a local area network gathering with demo competitions, gaming competitions and more. ^[10]

Dreamhack itself is one of the world's largest computer festival that came together in 2007. This gaming environment uses LAN for people to interact with each other through different games throughout the season where the festival is taking place. In this event people haved used demos or actual fully developed games to interact with each other through LAN's.

By: Johnny Jailall

Source:

http://www.worldrecordsacademy.org/games/img/longest_LAN_party_90191.jpg

Examples of Wikis

The following are some examples of wikis:^[11]

Wikipedia- http://en.wikipedia.org/ - The world's most comprehensive encyclopedia.
DisInfopedia- http://www.disinfopedia.org/ - "a collaborative project to produce a directory of public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests."
Wiktionary- http://en.wiktionary.org/ - "a collaborative project to produce a free multilingual dictionary in every language, with definitions, etymologies, pronunciations and quotations."
Wikiquote- http://en.wikiquote.org/- "a free online compendium of quotations in every language, including sources (where known), translations of non-English quotes, and links to Wikipedia for further information."

Sources: Picture: http://sibermedik.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/wikipedia-logo.png

--Mkomal 13:19, 8 May 2008 (CDT)