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VPN or VNC please help me

A

Allanv

Senior member
my boss wants to use the cable modem we have hooked to 1 PC and access our internal network which has a 131.107.x.xx pool of addresses now he wants to access the main file server to get access to the DB and other template files from home...

no the programs that use these files are installed locally to each machine so at home he will have a copy on his pc but how thw hell do i setup a VPN connection so he can use these files?

we also have a vehicle tracking system that has a server in our office and the way its networked is that there is a local copy of the software with mapped drives to the server and then we send a tracking request then the server sends out the request using a GSM network.

so my Q is this what the hell do i use??? VPN or VNC and how secure is all this ????

BTW i built the network so i know what i am doing but never had to use or was taugght about VPN....



Many thanks for your help


if you need more info please ask
 
use VPN. Don't use the integrated Win2K IPSec stuff; it only uses AH, not AH+ESP [IIRC]. that means the headers are encrypted, but the data is not. set up a BSD machine and use racoon for the key exchange to do ipsec - you can set 3DES as your encryption strength - if you are looking for a hardware solution get an Altiga VPN concentrator from Cisco - they have their own client and the web interface is pretty easy to work with. You can choose IPSEC or L2TP as well as different levels of encryption, define users and groups, upgrade the image on the concentrator on the fly, etc.
 
How do you connect to the Internet? How does he get to the Internet from home? That's got a lot to do with what solution you can come up with.

Also, some apps which require that software be installed locally are EXTREMELY bandwidth intensive. A VPN solution might not be fast enough to be acceptable.

- G
 
we have cable modem at work he has adsl at home

and i still have no clue at to what to do ???

can you link me to some resources to read or software to look at please?


many thanks again

 
I would not recommend a software solution for VPN. It burns up nearly half your systems power. You might have a look into getting a couple of Symantec/Nexland VPN Routers to do the VPN connect. Then set up a WinXP Pro machine at work w/ Remote Access and use the Terminal Server Client SW at home. I've been using that over Analog Dial up and even at a SH*T 24k connect, it works quite acceptably. Much better than PC Anywhere or VNC. As soon as we get DSL at work we will be using the Symantec VPN routers. You can get the least expensive model for about $300 from CDW

Nexland/Symantec Routers
 
Before you dive in, you need to understand the problem you're trying to solve, from a technical perspective. One key factor is how much data you plan to transfer over the VPN. How big is your app and how much does it transfer for an average transaction? If you're taking 2 MB, fine. If you're talking 50 MB, you could have a problem.

Keep in mind that most cable modem UPLOAD speeds are capped at 128Kb/s (about 12KB/s). Try to send a 50 MB file through that link and you're looking at about 100 minutes. Not good.

VNC (or some other remote control solution) just sends screenshots back and forth which requires minimal bandwidth (but isn't as flexible - No printing, for example). It works nicely for some solutions, not so great for others.

If you've got Windows 2000 server or Windows XP, both include a "Remote Administration" ability that allow you to take control of a session. If your boss has a Windows XP workstation you could set this up for him, via the Interent. Security is a bit iffy with that solution, but it would be very fast. I've done this (Well.. Citrix, which is the root of the XP Remote Admin solution) for many clients and it's worked great.

I think wlee's solution of a Nextland router would work great, as long as you run a remote control solution across it. You'll be happy you did and it's a great way to get remote access.

- G

The other option is to combine the two - Use a VPN to establish a secure connection to your network. Once that's up, use XP Remote Admin to run the app.

 
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