Well from what i can make out, techically it's just a on or offline LAN that has a web server like apache running on a file server on this LAN and that people access any files they need to download(locally) through the web page of the web server like http://127.0.0.1/file.exe where 127.0.0.1 would be the internal domain name. But i read that an intranet must be able to work offline but as far as i know you must be online to access files from apache even if accessing them locally? What am i missing ?

I think you may be getting confused as to what is meant be on-line and off-line. You are on-line when you connect to the LAN which will give you access to the Intranet although not necessary the Internet. On-line means connected to a network. When you are of-line you have access to nothing except what is on your own hard disk. No network connection of any description. 127.0.0.1 will only give you access to your own computer. Every Windows computer has this home address. If Apache is on the computer that this command is used on then it will work. That is what is known as off-line access. However if it run on some other computer on the LAN they will get nowhere. The will need to know the address within the LAN to access the web server and will need to be on-line to do it. Stuart

I know that 127.0.0.1 is for your own pc only it was just a vague example, you would replace that with the domain name or ip of the server, but apart from that am i right in my description, that an intranet will only allow you to download files from a web server locally, i mean i suppose you could code a "file uploader" in html on the web server to allow you to upload or modify files as well. But essentially the intranet is just the "internet idea on a LAN"?

>> But essentially the intranet is just the "internet idea on a LAN"? << Basically thats it. But you would still have to be logged onto the LAN to use it. You could download files of the Internet but only if the Intranet was coded to allow you to do it and then you would also need an Internet connection. Again, depending on how the Intranet was set up you can alternate between the Intranet and the Internet quite seemlesly. It all depends on how it is configured. If you want to use a dummy IP address to indicate a LAN address use 192.168.3.65 or something similar as a 192.168.x.x address can only ever exist on a LAN. 127.0.0.1 has a very specific meaning. Stuart

Yup your server would probably be 192.168.0.x or so with 127.0.0.1 being your local loopback testing ip.