Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations IamaSherpa on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

VPN remote access solution

Status
Not open for further replies.

VIStan

Technical User
Feb 7, 2010
9
NL
Im looking for a solution to handle remote access at our company. We support systems that we have at customers. These systems would be for example baggage handling systems, with PLC's, HLC's, servers etc.
In short a wide variety of clients. Because the machines are in the customers network we need access to the machines remotely. We used to do this by placing a VPN server device at the customers side and connecting to that so we could access our part of the network behind it. However many customers do not want a device in their network with incoming connections that they dont control.

So we are looking for a solution where there are no incoming connections at the customer, but rather the opposite: a client at the customer LAN connecting towards a VPN server at our LAN. Outgoing connections are usually less of a problem.

Something like below:


The idea is that our LAN and the customer LAN are somehow connected (with VPN?), ensuring that Client 1 can directly access client 2 and support it remotely, or client 1 to 3, same idea.

One problems is that client 2 or 3 could be a PLC, which means you cant directly access it. You need to be able to connect towards it with special software available on client 1, hence the direct access is important.

Could you place some sort of device in the place of the "?????" on the drawing that connects towards the VPN device and then routes the incoming traffic client 1 sends over the VPN tunnel towards the clients behind it (client 2, 3 etc)?

Im really drawing a blank on how to solve this.

Thanks!
 
Neither of those is gunna support managing PLC's without a step in between.
 
Are you saying you cant use logmein on client1 then access the plc thru client 1?
 
yes, because a plc cant be configured with any sort of connection, only with special software. Which needs to go over a VPN. U cant use a program over a logmein connection.
 
Did you want a VPN tunnel that is always up (site-to-site) or a remote access that builds the tunnel to connect and tears the tunnel down upon disconnect?

A site-to-site requires a VPN server on both sides not a client at the customer site). What layer 3 equipment(firewall/router/layer 3 switch connected to OPT-E-MAN or something) is at the edge of your network and the customer's network?

For remote access, you would set up a VPN server on your end and a VPN client (software) on the customer's end...is this what you mean, that whenever you have to have access to the customer LAN, you'd have to call and have them VPN to you? That sounds backwards...

/

tim@tim-laptop ~ $ sudo apt-get install windows
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package windows...Thank Goodness!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top