VPN Scenario

[Schoolies]

Local site has Bellsouth Business DSL (256 upload) and remote site has Cox Business account. Thinking about setting up a VPN for these two sites. There is a custom program whose executable runs on the local site servers (it is about 10mb). All computers use that executable all the time.

Do you think the remote site would have speed issues when connecting to the executable with this setup? I'm sure it will so I guess my question is more of, should I even attempt to set this up or it's definitely not going to work.

Thanks!

 

[imported_netman]

What is the speed of the Business connection?

What kind of VPN are you looking at? between systems like PPTP, or between dedicated devices like a Firewall (site to site, or client based)?

Also, I am assuming you mean that that just the executable is 10MB in size , and to run the executable it does NOT mean that it will take up 10Mbps of bandwidth. The initial execution of the program may take a little bit, however you never know, it may run OK (probably not great) after that. With the information included, there is really no way to tell how bandwidth intense the program is once it's executed.

 

[Schoolies]

The stats read 576kbps downstream and 256kbps upstream on the local business site.

As for the VPN type I was going to try software based VPN and see how well that performed and then upgrade to a hardware based vpn if need be.

Yes the executable is 10mb and then it hits a SQL database which is over 100MB.

 

[imported_netman]

It may not perform the greatest, but it may work well enough. Again, the 10MB executable is executed on the server, and you don't have to download that whole thing, so the traffic for a client/server app should really be fairly minimal (if the app is written half way decent). Also with the DB, it doesn't really matter how big the DB is. You are likely only going to be making individual queries to it, and the overall size of the DB shouldn't be a big concern.

 

[Schoolies]

Thanks for the comments netman. Last question.

Between the software vpn and hardware vpn, is there going to be that much of a difference in speed? I mean it seems to me if the outside pipe is slow than it wouldn't matter what you have running on your LAN?

 

[imported_netman]

Probably the biggest difference it the burden of the encryption/decryption. Off loading this to a firewall versus the client and server having to do it.

 

[Rapidskies]

Depending on the application performance you might want to consider Terminal Services for this situation. Your app might run fine as a fat-client but if it doesn't you could install your vpn then do a thin client. The big question would be if this custom app will work via a term serv session.

 

[ITJunkie]

Originally posted by: Rapidskies
Depending on the application performance you might want to consider Terminal Services for this situation. Your app might run fine as a fat-client but if it doesn't you could install your vpn then do a thin client. The big question would be if this custom app will work via a term serv session.

This is a good idea really...it's a pretty lightweight option on slow links. The only drawback would be the licenses required for TS to support the app.