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VPN Experts--Need your help for getting a proper VPN setup for our company

G

GCS

Diamond Member
Well the task has fallen to me to get a VPN setup for us. Our tax accountants need to be able to work from home this upcoming tax season.

So tell me what I need and how to do it

Basic Info:

1- We have high speed DSL at the office and a network(obviously) with 1 main server with all the data on it. We have a basic (linksys) router at the office.

2- All employee homes have high speed digital cable and small network (ie 1-2 computers) at home. All homes have a basic (linksys) router/switch.

3- I should mention that all the programs we intend to run will be installed on each machine in the home and run from those machines. All we really need the VPN for is to access the data files to work on them.


**I have wasted countless hours in the past on trying to make a tunnel between 2 linksys VPN routers w/o any luck.

So what do I need to make this work or is there just a service I can sign up with to provide me with what I need??

It is in your experienced hands to get me working!!

We are willing to spend a little $$$ but are not interested in blowing thousands of dollars on high end equipment. Please keep that in mind when offering your suggestions.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Greg
 
Workgroups in all locations

Office (8 computers) -- has Linksys VPN router
My house (2 computers) -- has Linksys VPN router
President's house(3 computers)
Coworker's house (2 computers)

All systems are running Windows XP Pro with all latest updates (but NO SP2 yet).

Greg
 
In your first post you say you have a server machine. Is that just a Win XP machine acting as a server? Or is it a Windows 2000/2003 server?

John
 
WinXP Pro machine acting as a server. It has all of our data on it and a few programs run from the server in a Network Installation but most of our programs have to be run on each machine locally (real pain in the butt) but ALL data is pulled from the server machine (ie no one works on that machine at all and its the fastest machine we have in the building).

Greg
 
Hmmm. I'm not real experienced with Linksys stuff as far as VPN is concerned. Depending on how many simultaneous VPN users your Linksys router can support, what I might do is let each user VPN into the Linksys router, and open port 3389/TCP for that user so they can connect to their Windows XP machine at the office via remote desktop. At that point, they can just work from their PC at the office and do what they need to do. This way you just have one port open for each user, and you wont have to mess the ports needed to do file sharing over a VPN which could also open your network up to viral infection from anything on the PC's at the users house.

I am assuming that each of these users has a PC at the office that they use. If they dont, that pretty much blows this suggestion.

Anyways, that's my offering.
 
Like Boscoh said is you have to be careful with your solution since when you have a user VPN in from home you are opening up your network to be infected from the users home computer. Doing that could be a possible nightmare for you. What I would suggest is to find a dedicated VPN unit that can chech for current virus scanning software befroe it links you up. I know that some of the Cisco gear will do that, but I am not sure of the model numbers.

John
 
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