• You are at home, in the evening or on the weekend, and would like access to the information on your office computer system.
• An employee moves out of state and could continue to perform his or her job, if he or she could inexpensively access your primary computer applications.
• Your accounting needs could be handled by a part-time person working from home, if your accounting package could be accessed remotely.
• You are out of town on business, have an Internet connection, and would like to check your e-mail.
• You are opening up a branch office in another location, or town, and would like to leverage your existing computer technology investments and share data.
  

A Solution
A Wide Area Network (WAN) would allow you the access you need to perform these tasks.

A few years ago, establishing a WAN was very costly. It involved expensive hardware, software and communication lines that cost in excess of $1,000 per month, per line. Similar functionality can now be achieved using relatively affordable hardware, software that you may already own, and DSL lines costing less than $50 per month.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN), which uses the Internet to carry your data, makes this type of connectivity possible.

Understanding VPNs
VPNs provide an encrypted and protected connection between computers using the Internet. There are a number of ways to establish VPNs, and the appropriate approach depends on the volume of users you anticipate, the computer applications they will access and the amount of data that will be transmitted.

Let’s look at an actual example of a VPN in an architectural firm. The firm uses AutoCad for their drawings. The principals of the firm wanted to be able to access these drawings from home and other remote locations.

One solution was to simply make a copy of the drawings on a disk, or other media, and carry them home or to off-site locations. The disadvantage to this approach is that another individual at the office may work on the original file and then lose those changes when the copy file is brought back to the office and overwrites the file residing on the office’s system.

The solution this particular company implemented involved installing a firewall that supports VPN, in this case a Symantec Firewall with a retail price of $1,199. The company’s main server was running Windows 2000 server, which supports a program called Windows Terminal Services. This program facilitates the transfer of data over the Internet by only sending the keystrokes and image changes across the VPN, significantly lowering the amount of data being transmitted.

The software required no incremental cost, as it was included in the original operating system software. Because the company already had a T-1 data line and the principals already had high-speed Internet connections at home, there was no incremental cost in establishing the data lines. Labor time to establish the VPN and test the system totaled six hours.

In this example, for a one-time cost of less than $2,000 and no incremental cost, multiple remote workers were connected to the information in the company’s computer system.

VPNs have become low-cost, mainstream methods of connecting remote offices and remote workers. For more information, visit the Microsoft Web site at www.microsoft.com and search for Terminal Services. Or visit the Symantec Web site at www.symantec.com and search on Virtual Private Networks.

Joni S. Hanebutt is the president of Hanebutt Consulting Group. HCG is a computer consulting firm, with an expertise in helping small to mid-size business establish and maintain their computer network infrastructure. HCG is a Microsoft Certified Partner and a Symantec Enterprise Partner and can be reached at (913) 897-8000.