VPN Questions

[ZedIDave]

We mfg machines and I want to have a VPN router to ship with each machine. This will allow me to connect from my PC and have access to the components on my customers machine to allow trouble-shooting. I have very little knowledge on the best way to set this up.
The machines ship to various customers with ip addresses in the range of 192.168.1.###. They reside in there own network and will not connect to the customers except for the our VPN's routers connection to there modem or router for access to the internet. I want to purchase a VPN router for testing but I want to make a well informed decision.

1) With hardware and software forever changing, what type of hardware/software should I look at that will give me the best solution. Should I use SSL (client software not required) or IPSec?

2) What mfg. has the most widely used routers, Cisco, Netgear ??? What about ease of setup?

3) I would need to have the customers site open "ports" to allow the software on my PC to get access through there firewall to the items (PLC, HMI's etc..)on the machine. These ports appear to be vendor/software specific, is this correct?

I do not require anything fancy, just one tunnel from my pc connecting to the router at my customers site.

Thanks

 

[dberg35]

Check out logmein.com

 

[ZedIDave]

Thanks for the reply, but I have looked at these. We have systems out in the field without a PC. These machines will only have a PLC (Programmable Logic Controller). These controllers use a Ethernet connection to interface with it. I want a VPN to be at these locations that I can log into and get access to the PLC.