Ask Dr. IntraNet
Please step in and lie down, Steve Blass, is in for consultations. He understands the strains felt by people developing and managing intranets. Send your problems to dr.intranet@paranet.com

Q Our users are often on the road and dialing in to the company intranet, mostly via 28.8K bit/sec modems. What's the optimal page size for this kind of download?

A You're looking at a 27.8 second transmission time for a 100K-byte file, according to the calculation 100K bytes times 8 bit/byte divided by 28.8K bit/sec. In practice, with a 26.4K bit/sec connection and modem compression on both ends, a 100K-byte transfer can take about 24 seconds.

Remember, smaller is usually better. Now that Microsoft Word supports "Save as HTML," for example, don't make users download Word documents. The perceived speed increase over a dial-up connection is incredible.

The downloads will seem quicker, too, if you include links from text and graphics so users can click to begin tasks. Also, put graphic sizing information in your HTML source so the browser can display the text while the graphic is being transferred. And put border graphics in separate frames so they're not downloaded with each new page.

In addition, make sure the graphics are as small as possible, have transparent backgrounds and add value. And, if you really want to ensure your intranet pages look good and move quickly over a dial-up line, make developers build them via a modem connection.

Q What's the best way to structure an intranet's file directory so I can easily modify it should the need arise?

A I think you should at least keep iconic and banner images, standard headers and executable content in distinct static locations to simplify server administration. If you separate delivery tools from enterprise data by using different folders or even distinct physical storage media, it's a lot easier to migrate to the next operating system or Web server, for example.

Simply put, keep your data on its own media. Stripe it, mirror it, RAID it, back it up religiously and be certain you know how to restore it. Then, migrating to the next generation of delivery software is a matter of teaching the new tools how to read your disk.