What can you do with a Virtual Private Network? Options

One of our clients is looking at setting up a number of satelite
branch offices for staff to work remotely.

- What can you do with a windows server 2003/sbs 2003 VPN and a basic
broadband connection?


- With a VPN are you restricted to just basic file transfer and
printing?


Our client would want the remote staff to be able to access accounts
software, contact management databases etc all of which are stored on
the central office server. Obviously it's easy enough to configure a
vpn and map a drive but what about accessing databases and software
all stored on the server?


If you are restriced to file transfer and printing how do large
organisations deal with remote offices?

There are not really any built-in restrictions on what a VPN client can
do. But database operations are not really a suitable application. The
latency of a VPN can be high enough to cause db requests to time out. For
database operations you are better off using terminal services so that the
client and server are both running on a high-speed link, not across a slow
link like VPN.

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:e53f8589-e3ec-4b24-bf40-(E-Mail Removed)...
> One of our clients is looking at setting up a number of satelite
> branch offices for staff to work remotely.
>
> - What can you do with a windows server 2003/sbs 2003 VPN and a basic
> broadband connection?
>
>
> - With a VPN are you restricted to just basic file transfer and
> printing?
>
>
> Our client would want the remote staff to be able to access accounts
> software, contact management databases etc all of which are stored on
> the central office server. Obviously it's easy enough to configure a
> vpn and map a drive but what about accessing databases and software
> all stored on the server?
>
>
> If you are restriced to file transfer and printing how do large
> organisations deal with remote offices?