Possible VPN Solutions - Connecting two offices

[ennovers]

My name is Scott and I could use some help. I am the IT Director for my company which is pretty small. 50 employees max. We have two offices. One in NJ (HQ) and one in NYC (Sales Office). Right now I am running a make shift "file server" on a higher end desktop with Windows Vista. I was able to open up access to allow a single VPN connection to this machine. (PPTP) Just your basic garden variety simple VPN tunnel with basic authentication. (I know not very secure).

I was able to do this on my own but I need some help with the next step. Innate in this type of set-up, only one user can access the server from offsite at a time. In the IMMEDIATE future, I need to have at least 3-5 concurrent users being able to pull files from this server. Similarly, I’ve designed a “homegrown” software package that will be housed on a separate “application server”. We will eventually need a multi-user VPN connection to this server as well.

Last but not least, we have Sales and Merchandising personnel all over; including ASIA, EUROPE and CANADA. They will need access to these servers as well.

I need suggestions on what type of set-up is best suited for this business model and how do I go about getting started. Unfortunately, as the economy is in shambles, I don’t have a large budget.

Here is some basic info for both offices. End-user base is comprised of a mixture of Mac and PC users, but mostly PC users.

CH (HQ)
ISP: Comcast.
Bandwidth: cable (not exactly sure of the Mbps)
Hardware: SMC Model 8014

NYC – (Sales)
ISP: Verizon
Bandwidth: ADSL (not exactly sure of the Mbps)
Hardware: Westell Model A90

 

[Grenage]

There are many, many VPN solutions available, most of them having fans. I would personally stay away from Linksys VPN routers, we had nothing but problems with them; the parent company, Cisco, do however make some excellent kit (although it's not particularly cheap).

We are using PFSense (

http://www.pfsense.com)

here on some older HP servers. It's been rock-solid, and I really can't sing it's praises enough. The system is free, although they do offer commercial support.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer

 

[psi07004]

One thought would be to use a Sonicwall TZ (180, 190, 210) series appliance (which are fairly inexpensive) to establish a site to site VPN between the two offices. Then your overseas and other outside accounts could use the SSL VPN feature to access the network as required.

 

[netwroktech]

I suggest you to use Routing and Remote Access of your server side.

2nd solution is use Netgear Prosafe Firewalls, which are cheaper and provide best funtionality for VPN Tunnels so u can expands to unlimited numbers of users which can access it.

 

[North323]

sounds like you need a network engineer to spec it out. we can make all the suggestions but we dont know the whole story. future growth? more locations? who is going to support it? time zone issues? budget? as a director, do you have time to implement and/or install?