Need a sample on how to connect to a different system from the WEB application which is in the network?

I developed an Web application which reads some data from the files from different systems in the network.As its a web application it can be used any where in the network ,,,,so my question is how do i connect to a different system by entering an ipaddress or systemname which are in the network.

currently i am able to connect to a different system/machine by changing the value in my web.config file manually(which is not a good practice).

Is there any generic idea on which i can开发者_运维问答 follow to achieve what i am expecting rather than changing the web.config file.

here is an example, I don't know how current or how accurate: http://www.csharp-station.com/HowTo/HttpWebFetch.aspx