VPN Trying to unserstand all of this

[SerialCoder]

I have was asked to set up a VPN to connect a facilty across town to our LAN. I have a Win2K server with AD and RAS set up but it is not my amin server, just a box that I am learning on. My primary goal is to allow one or two users on the corp. lan to conect to an access database at the other facility. I see alot of talk about hareware here and had not really considered that it could be a hardware setup thing.

Am I understanding this?....
1. I buy a certian router and hook it to the remote location.
2. Set up my PCs at corporate to connect to that router
3. I will see that network as if it was the internal one?

Any help here would be appreciated.

 

[EddieVenus]

yes and no, you can see it as local, sort of. You will see it as another lan, but one that you can access. You are thinking of this all wrong though. First off, you should think of site to site VPN if you wish to use it with multiple users, this can be accomplished cheaply, as with 2 linksys BEFVP41's. This is the best way to get multiple users from 1 place to a common place off their LAN. You could also set up just one VPN gateway at the remote site (where the DB is) and have all users VPn to it, either with software client like the one in windows, or a 3rd party, or with a hardware client like the linksys befvp41 for each user. That is not the way to go though as multiple tunnels would degrade the performance of the connection. You could go with higher end stuff, i.e. Cisco PIX on each end, or checkpoint, or Symantec, or just about anyone for that matter, but that is a waste for small time stuff like what you described. If security is of high concern get a higher end product, otherwise use linksys on both ends. Then users on one side can see the users on the other side, or at least the machines out there. And you only have to set up one tunnel. Now you will need to make sure that the tunnel will go through your companies firewall OK, so check with the admin for the firewall, but it should. Once you have the hardware in place the rest is easy, and you can have a VPN between your locations in no time. You might wish to discuss this with your WAN guy since most higher end firewalls now have VPN capabilities either built in, or as an addon. You might not need to buy any more hardware for this, who knows.

EV

 

[GriffMG]

Be careful trying to access an Access MDB across a VPN using a 'share' it will be v slow. Try something like VNC - which is a free pcAnywhere program.
Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing

 

[ninjaclark]

same issue - I was asked to set up a VPN to connect a remote office with 5 users (4w2k & 1win98) to our LAN to be able to use a access database. looking at using a BEFVP41 with the remote users connecting by microsofts built-in vpn client. Has anyone tried this with success? my other option is to purchase VPN client software like SSH Sentinel at $250CAN/per client is a little high. Working with a ISDN connection in regards to the speed with a access database over VPN will that work. As for the VNC does that work with multiple connections?

 

[KarveR]

I had the same question asked of me too, so I went to

http://www.smoothwall.org,

had a rummage , downloaded the software, set up 2 old pentium 100's and now have VPN

My boss got clever and siad "do it for lots of people".

purchased Corp server from those nice SmoothWallpeeps and some client software and did it for more peeps.

Easy innit. - he loved the price too, 2 well old pcs and a couple of hundred UK pounds ______________________________________________________________________
There's no present like the time, they say. - Henry's Cat.

 

[GriffMG]

VNC is a simple piece of free software provided by AT&T which does cross-platform remote control. As far as I can tell, you would need a host machine for each remote client -unlike something like Citrix or Terminal Server.

HTH

Regards

Griff
Keep [Smile]ing