Thinking about a VPN - any advice?

[hoinvip]

Hello,

I am considering setting up a VPN for our network and wanted to get some advice and tips before we start...

We have 3 offices located across the UK and we are thinking about using ADSL to create a VPN between these sites for secure data transfer and the like. I am trying to work out what we'd need to do to acheive this and also obtain internet email and browsing access also.

We are considering the use of Cisco routers to handle the networking but wondered if we could use a win2k solution or similar to give us the connections we need.

I know it's a pretty open question but nothing has been decided on a tech level yet and I have a fair amount of scope.

Any advice very welcome.

Many thanks,

Peter

 

[Guest_imported]

Stay away from anything labeled Enterasys.
Microsoft cannot do much with NAT if that is important.
Cisco routers configured with VPN software could probably do all you need to. Cisco has a 2651 router with a vpn bundle- we used it successfully and for reasonable cost- routing vpn traffic over the internet and networking back on our LAN.

good luck

 

[NThomas]

setting up a vpn is dead simple using products like watchguard or sonicwall i would suggest using the soho's. for a small wan such as yours. If you are using box to box configuration either the Watchguard soho with vpn upgrade or sonicwall soho2 with vpn upgrade will be sufficiant. If you need vpn clients go for the sonicwall handles throughput alot better. These soho's are available for under £1,000 and are alot better solution than using windows or software based firewalls. These products are entry level so if you are thinking about expanding your wan you might want to look at a higher spec, but the cost will tenfold.