My volunteer fire department is currently set up with four W98 machines on a 100mb ethernet network, with a BSDUnix file server for central data storage and workgroup security. We use Samba to share the directories on the server out to the W98 machines as networked drives. Our internet connection is by means of a cable modem connected to the network through a Linksys Cable/DSL router.
One of the applications we run is a fire department management program called Firehouse Software. The application is installed on each W98 workstation but its data files are located on one of the shared drives on the server. One of the main functions of this software is to generate "Incident Reports" which are eventually uploaded to the state, then eventually on to FEMA for statistical analysis of fire incidents nationwide.
By the way, this whole lashup was done for (less the W98 machines) about $1500.00, and with the volunteer help of my son, who's a computer science major.
So far so good. Now for my question:
This year, our fire department merged with two adjacent fire departments. My station was designated as the "central station" (mostly because it's between the other two...duh...but also because of the network infrastructure we already had in place). Both of the other stations also run Firehouse Software, but each only have a single Windows box.
It is our intention to try to "centralize" the incident report databases. (Each station can no longer retain its own unique database as, during many incidents, units from two or more of our stations respond, and if we all had unique databases and did our own seperate reporting, one incident would statistically become two or three.) As I see it, the other two stations would "dial in" or somehow connect to our network, run the Firehouse Software application on their local machine, but connect to the database on our server. Both of the remote stations, by the way, are connected to the internet via "Fuse".
This sort of sounds like a Remote Access Server to me.
What's the best way to get this done?
One of the applications we run is a fire department management program called Firehouse Software. The application is installed on each W98 workstation but its data files are located on one of the shared drives on the server. One of the main functions of this software is to generate "Incident Reports" which are eventually uploaded to the state, then eventually on to FEMA for statistical analysis of fire incidents nationwide.
By the way, this whole lashup was done for (less the W98 machines) about $1500.00, and with the volunteer help of my son, who's a computer science major.
So far so good. Now for my question:
This year, our fire department merged with two adjacent fire departments. My station was designated as the "central station" (mostly because it's between the other two...duh...but also because of the network infrastructure we already had in place). Both of the other stations also run Firehouse Software, but each only have a single Windows box.
It is our intention to try to "centralize" the incident report databases. (Each station can no longer retain its own unique database as, during many incidents, units from two or more of our stations respond, and if we all had unique databases and did our own seperate reporting, one incident would statistically become two or three.) As I see it, the other two stations would "dial in" or somehow connect to our network, run the Firehouse Software application on their local machine, but connect to the database on our server. Both of the remote stations, by the way, are connected to the internet via "Fuse".
This sort of sounds like a Remote Access Server to me.
What's the best way to get this done?