Need Suggestions

[tkr2099]

I just got hired on as a computer intern at a bus company (altho it's funny to call me an intern when I'm the sole tech person.) One of my main tasks is to come up with a solution for their remote access project. For scheduling, payroll, billing, reports, and all of that good stuff they use a program called CTS that they hired a company to develop specifically for them. We have four locations and currently each has it's own database. Once a month the information from the other location's databases is added to the database at the main location. Computers at each location access their database via file sharing. They are wanting to set it up so that the main database is accessible from each location. All but one location has DSL.

They had a guy that goes to school with me hired first (he was an idiot, he got fired.) He was all for a VPN, which we may end up having to use. I thought about remote desktop, but that wouldn't work due to lagginess/bandwidth issues. He had an F5 FirePass VPN system picked out, which is about $8k, and a Dell server, which was another $3k. I'm sure we can set something up cheaper than that. The best solution I can think of is if we could develop a new web-based program that worked over the browser. PHP for the forms and MySQL for the database. If they needed to view/change schedule or whatever, simply login to the website. However, I seriously doubt that they would be willing to abandon the old program. If anyone has any alternatives to a VPN, or ideas on how I could implement a VPN cheaper, please let me know.

 

[Goosemaster]

VPN is prolly your best bet as you might never get anywhere in getting them to dump an $$ but still functional program.

Barebones is doable as logn as you don't buy junk.

All you need is endpoints at each DSL location and a simple $500 dell VPN server running somethign simple such as windows 2003 server.

For the dsl-less location, use RAS for remote access/dialup vpn