Computer Nerds: *GOOD* VPN Solution?

[RobH]

What are you computer guys using for a VPN solution between your offices? Do you go with a hardware VPN router? or do you like the microsloft PPTP crap? What about when you have a 56K connection to the Internet? is there a router that can both share the Internet and connect to the VPN over standard 56K PPP account?

A lot of my offices are on 56k dial up accounts I need something that can perform well with such a small bottle neck. In the past, I've had performance problems with 56k connections and the PPTP implementation built into Windows NT Server 4.0.

NetBIOS over the Internet is my current "WAN" solution. Now that msblaster has raped all of these computers, several of my ISPs have blocked netbios ports. It's time to step up and make a real VPN. woohoo, more work for me.

I'm just looking for good ideas.

Thanks,
Robert

 

[HumboldtBlazer]

Frame Relay, and from anywhere to the office I use a VPN by Watchgaurd on my Soho FireBox Firelwall. It does a nice IP Sec Tunnel.

 

[FastEddy]

I'm currently setup with two cans and a string.
I dint have to worry about worms but birds like to perch in the string.

 

[HumboldtBlazer]

Liar:doc:

 

[FastEddy]

OK so I shoot the birds. I get a better connection.

 

[Çh®i§tiªñ]

You can go with a decent Cisco ISDN Max series. Nice part is, you can add a dialup interface for fault tolerance if need be.

Frame relay is real nice and self healing while a P2P is also nice because of consistency and price. 6 of one and half dozen of the other. I personally run both frame and P2P and you have the best of both worlds and it never goes down.

Do you have a budget to work with? If so, how much and how many sites? Also, what can you spend on Monthly connection fees? Usage? Overall MRC is what I am looking for.

 

[WoodiE]

A friend and I just use our SOHO Routers using IPsec. I have a SMC SMC7004ABR router and I believe his is a Netgear router.


-Michael

 

[Smurfola212]

Waffle? :llama:

 

[msly]

Originally posted by RobH
What are you computer guys using for a VPN solution between your offices? Do you go with a hardware VPN router? or do you like the microsloft PPTP crap? What about when you have a 56K connection to the Internet? is there a router that can both share the Internet and connect to the VPN over standard 56K PPP account?

SNIP>>>>

I agree with Christian, we would really need to have an Idea of the budget. There are many solutions out there, I even had my Boss here link schools with a vpn using cheap Linksys routers

Info here

Not that that was the best soulution because it was only temporary but it worked well and was dirt cheap. I'm sure you would probably want to go with something a little more hearty.

slY

 

[RobH]

The size and distribution of this company is always screwing me over. We have maybe 50 computers in 12 locations. We therefore, have these tiny offices that can't afford frame-relay, t1, or anything "good". In three offices, however, we have dsl.

i should be able to get a soho router or something pretty easy for the dsl offices. the other offices, however, are going to be a bitch. Those offices don't have access to DSL. I, therefore, need a router than can dial up a PPP session and tunnel it's way back to the main office over the internet. It also has to have Network Address Translation capabilities for Internet sharing (proxies suck).

dial-up + ppp + nat + vpn = ? ... fart in the wind?

oh yeah for a budget, we spend like $80/month on dsl connections. chicago pays $170/month for SDSL but that's only because the alternative is 4 cents a minute for local calls. dial up runs $40 including phone line. it's hard to justify an $800/month connection for a 4 person office.

 

[Çh®i§tiªñ]

How about ISDN ?

 

[RobH]

jeez you're a fast poster chris

ISDN is typically a per minute charge from the telco. even at $0.01 per minute you're looking at $102 per month in telco charges alone. All of that for only 128kbps? i never though it was worth it. if the dial-up router doesn't exist, I may have to convince the higher ups otherwise.

 

[robriguez]

If you had more permanent dsl or frac/T connections I would suggest the SonicWall SOHO3. They start at around $500 per router for 5 VPN connections....If you need more than that you can just buy a few more VPN licenses.

Check it out here:
http://www.sonicwall.com/products/soho3.html

 

[msly]

I say you put cable modems in each office run your vpn through them. Thats what we did here and it worked fine. Especially since your not talking about a lot of people. Not saying its the best solution but it was cost effective, until we were able to get our true WAN in place.

 

[pacers40]

I am in charge of the VPN solution for my company, We use two Nortel 5000 Contivity Switch , this uses a client that needs to be loaded on each machine, but any type of Internet connection will attach to it. For all of the remote offices of more than one or two computers Nortel makes a smaller version of the Contivity switch and you can set up branch office connections which don't require the client software to be loaded on the machines. This solution is a bit pricey to get setup but once it is in place there are minimul(sp?) problems. Most of those are end user related.

 

[RobH]

it is a little spendy isn't it?

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=501578

weighs 43 pounds! holly hell.

sly, the offices that are on dial up can't get cable or dsl in their area. we have a few places that are out in the boonies:

http://www.vibra-tech-inc.com/locations/

 

[robriguez]

What we have done in the past for our customers who have single user dial-ups that needs access into the corporate network is to have them run software firewalls with a software VPN connection.

This allows for low cost of hardware at the remote locations and still have corporate security. DO NOT. I say DO NOT allow a remote user to have VPN access to the corporate network without running some type of firewall. But I'm sure you know this already.

The SonicWall I suggested can do both hardware VPN (SonicWall to SonicWall) or software VPN (PC to SonicWall). The software client is a free download off their website.

The only reason I dont suggest using Cisco is that you said your on a tight budget.

 

[msly]

Originally posted by RobH
it is a little spendy isn't it?

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=501578

weighs 43 pounds! holly hell.



http://www.vibra-tech-inc.com/locations/

sly, the offices that are on dial up can't get cable or dsl in their area. we have a few places that are out in the boonies:

Wow thats really remote.... Must be fun for u.

I get pissed when i have to walk up to the 3rd floor when some idiot does not know how to re-boot LOL

 

[RobH]

yeah i'm the only computer guy and it's kind of hard to "walk" over and help someone. i have mad telephone skills. i can also connect via pcAnywhere if i really need to. it's just a pain because i have to "leap frog" from the office server to the client's pc. pain in the butt.

rob, i was checking out the SonicWALL PRO 230. For $1600, it's not too bad. I'm curious if the vpn software works on NT 4.0. If it looks like a network interface under NT, then it would be just sweet. also, i would need more than 10 vpn client licenses, but it appears you can order extras. If it can work the way i think it canm, I'd only need a license per office -- not a big deal. Thanks for the info man. I think I may have to order one of these and see what I can do with it.

 

[RodDog]

I used to work for an organization with users who worked out of their homes which were all in BFE. What we did is simply put in a RRAS server with some modems. When the user needed to be connected to the network they just dialed in. You can also set the inactive time before it kicks them off so you won't have high long distance bills. You may have to get a few more phone lines installed at some of your offices but that's cheap and so is the old pc you can put Windows 2000 server with RAS on.

Just a Thought,
RodDog