VPN using D-Link routers, 7 users connecting - are they up to it?

[rmhrc]

I've got a DFL-700 at my head office, and 2 other sites connecting via VPN to it using DI-804HV's. The head office has an SDSL connection, and the 2 sites have ADSL. The head office network is Windows Server 2003, all clients are XP pro.

Users are able to connect and access emails, but often complain of the connection dropping out, or things being extremely slow. Research shows that this is worse in the afternoons, which is likely due to more users connecting.

At any one time there could potentially be up to about 7 users connecting. I'm wondering if this is too many for our particular routers?

I've fiddled with things like MTU sizes, and turning off the windows firewall, but it doesn't seem to change it. We've only recently changed to an SDSL connection, and had hoped this would cure the problem. Sadly it hasn't.

Can anyone suggest anything, or have they experienced similar problems? Furthermore, would you recommend alternative routers to use? I may be able to justify spending a bit more on them to my boss than we have done previously.

I can provide more technical info if required.
Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[rmhrc]

By the way most times when I ping each network it returns 100%, but quite often it is 50%.

 

[nsantin]

I've never considered D-Link to be commercial grade. I'm a Nortel fan, but there are other comemrcial grade VPN appliances.

We have about 10 users connecting on a Contivity 1010 box on a 4MB DSL line and its pretty solid.

 

[rmhrc]

Thanks for the info. Is it widely considered that DLink routers aren't really commercial grade for VPN's?

 

[ETWatson]

I think it's fair to say that DLink does not produce what are generally considered to be Enterprise Class (i.e. 'commercial') routers. That said, your router model 'should' work just fine for 7 users/connections, indeed for many more than that - DLink certainly thinks so ("

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=327")

Questions:

- How are users 'connecting'. In other words, they log in to XP at the PC. Do they do a subsequent client based 'vpn' connection? Assuming answer = 'no', how is it they subsequently notice the connection drops?

- The symptoms could be bandwidth related given that ping (icmp) is among the first traffic (generally) dropped when wan circuit busy. What's the 'speed' of your SDSL connection ? What does the ISP say about your circuit utilizaion at each of the sites?

 

[rmhrc]

Yes, users connect when they log into XP Pro. They notice the connection has dropped when Outlook goes offline, and won't connect for a while. Then when it does reconnect, it drops again after a little while.

I don't really know a lot about circuit utilization - could you expand a bit?

I've noticed that when I ping from one router to another, packets are occasionally lost. So this would suggest it's a problem between the routers?

I'm thinking maybe I need some new routers, as these routers don't appear to be the best to use anyway, judging by how complicated they were to set up, using this guide:

ftp://ftp.dlink.co.uk/dfl_firewall/dfl-700/dfl-700_to_di-804hv_vpn.pdf

 

[rmhrc]

To add to that:

SDSL speed is 2mb by the way. The ADSL of our remote sites is 1mb.