[Techtalk] Extending the network

[Charlotte Oliver]

On Mon, Apr 26, 2004 at 06:39:20PM +0200, Dan Richter wrote:
> Hi everyone.
> 
> My in-laws run a small business that's grown beyond the space that's 
> immediately available to them. They want to put an employee in a 
> building across the street, and they want that employee to have access 
> to the corporate network.

Neat, we're facing the same challenge at work, but the new space is
three floors down and on someone else's Internet connection.

> I assume that Wifi is too loose on security. It wouldn't be appropriate 
> to stretch an ethernet cable between two windows, but there is 
> line-of-site, so an infrared transmitter might be a solution. It may 
> also be possible to set up a VPN (Virtual Private Network) operating 
> across the Internet.

I've seen VPN mentioned - the only major problem is speed.  What will
the employee be accessing from the corporate network?  In our case, it's
large files kept on the networks and the Internet connection will be on a different ISP
from us, so the connection across the Internet is just too slow.  If
it's someone who's just checking e-mail and downloading documents from
your network, it should be fine, but for real-time applications run off
of servers, it might not be fast enough.

VPN is awfully nice, though. :)

Charlotte