has anyone setup a remote dialup to a business cable network

[SkepticalOne]

Hopefully I'll provide enough information to make sense with this. A small business LAN I take care of that is connected via an SMC Barricade router to cable internet using the DHCP Server in the router. There is a file server and 4 work stations. The file server has an external modem as well for certain needed dialup file transfers. One large database program provides the shared information to the LAN via mapped drives. The owner now wishes to access the network to work from home occasionally, but has no high bandwidth choices in his neighborhood as yet, so it looks like dialup will be his point of access for the time being. All work stations and the file server are Windows 98 due to lack of comfort for the owners and workers with more advanced OSes as well as the large Database program not fully supporting NT in any flavor (yeah I know this isn't the best situation, but when I got here half their vendor software was still old DOS stuff.).
I've never attempted this, but reading this afternoon makes me believe this is doable using terminal server? Can VPN work in this situation? Security measures with the dialup user? Will the firewall (NAT based in the router) protect the dialup user? Can he access the internet through this sort of connection?
I guess I'm sort of surprised I've never run into this before and it's giving my headaches as I consider the possibilities, and try to fathom the reading I found on it, mostly networking forums like this that had their own set of particulars.
Surely some kind soul has experience with this and might aid a newbie to this mixed bag of networking opportunities.
Thanks.

 

[wyvrn]

Good topic. I cannot help but I would like to know also.

 

[skyking]

Symantec's pcanywhere could be used to dial into the server, and go from there.

 

[wolf31o2]

Honestly, he would do better to dial directly into his workstation or the server. To access the Internet, the machine he is dialig into will have to dish out an IP address to his machine, then also forward all requests not destined to that machine to the router. In essence, the server (or workstation) will have to become a router itself. This is impossible with Windows 98 without using 3rd-party software. If the machines are Windows 98 Second Edition, then you can use Internet Connection sharing to allow the dialed-in user to access the Internet via the router.

 

[wyvrn]

How does one dial into Windows 98 in the first place?

 

[wyvrn]

bump

 

[bilalhmd]

Since you are dialing directly in to the computer, I don't think that VPN would be necessary. The dial in connection should verify the user as able to log on to the computer/network. If he wanted to access the internet through his office network, then it would be better for him to use a program like pcAnywhere because otherwise his connection would actually be slower than a regular dial up connection if it would work at all. Also, if it is a large database/program, pcanywhere would be a lot faster than actually running the program at his home computer.

Now, I am not totally sure about this, but I am assuming that the workstations have some sort of runtime program on them running the database. If this is the case, he could have a regular server running NT where the data/main program would be saved.

As far as dialing in to a Win98 computer. I am not running Win98 anymore so this is from memory. But, you have to go in to dial up networking, and I think it is under tools. There is an option that is called something like dial up server or allow dialin connections. You have to enable that and you can dial in to the computer.

 

[Abzstrak]

yea, install pcanywhere on his desktop at work and let him dial into it... its slow as crap but it'll work fine and will be secure... all other options will require a bit of work and alot more cost.