LAN to LAN set-up via broadband?

We have a Draytek Vigor 2600 Router which we use in the office to connect
to the web, and our LAN is made up of about 18 PC's and a Windows
2003 Server. Our company still owns a smaller office about a half a mile
away. We want to use that office for training, and so need to set up a LAN
in the old office. Whats the best way to connect them? Another Draytek
Vigor 2600 could give us a LAN to LAN VPN as I understand it, but
is there any other way? What are leased lines?



James H

On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:57:36 +0000 (UTC), "J Houston" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>We have a Draytek Vigor 2600 Router which we use in the office to connect
>to the web, and our LAN is made up of about 18 PC's and a Windows
>2003 Server. Our company still owns a smaller office about a half a mile
>away. We want to use that office for training, and so need to set up a LAN
>in the old office. Whats the best way to connect them? Another Draytek
>Vigor 2600 could give us a LAN to LAN VPN as I understand it, but
>is there any other way? What are leased lines?
>
>
>
>James H
>
If the buildings are only half a mile apart with suitable geography wireless
lan kit may be an option.

"Moonshine" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:57:36 +0000 (UTC), "J Houston"
<(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>
> If the buildings are only half a mile apart with suitable geography
wireless
> lan kit may be an option.

Looking at Multimap, our two offices are over 500m apart as
the crow flies, with lots of buildings inbetween, right in the
heart of a big city centre. Is wireless really a workable solution
in these circumstances?



James H

J Houston <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> "Moonshine" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>> On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:57:36 +0000 (UTC), "J Houston"
> <(E-Mail Removed)>
>> wrote:
>>
>> If the buildings are only half a mile apart with suitable geography
> wireless
>> lan kit may be an option.
>
> Looking at Multimap, our two offices are over 500m apart as
> the crow flies, with lots of buildings inbetween, right in the
> heart of a big city centre. Is wireless really a workable solution
> in these circumstances?

If you can get line of sight (buildings tall enough, or a small mast
would do) then it may be possible.
Through one small building - maybe, if you'r lucky.
Through several, probably not.

I suspect you'd need to exceed the statutory EIRP limits to get a link.

In article <bu5v7g$opq$(E-Mail Removed)>, (E-Mail Removed)
says...
> We have a Draytek Vigor 2600 Router which we use in the office to connect
> to the web, and our LAN is made up of about 18 PC's and a Windows
> 2003 Server. Our company still owns a smaller office about a half a mile
> away. We want to use that office for training, and so need to set up a LAN
> in the old office. Whats the best way to connect them? Another Draytek
> Vigor 2600 could give us a LAN to LAN VPN as I understand it, but
> is there any other way? What are leased lines?
>
>
>
> James H
>
>
>
what are leased lines: bloody expensive.
If you are on a budget then I would go for getting another 2600 router,
depending on where you are you might be able to get sdsl rathen than
adsl so that you uploads are the same speeds as your downloads which
would help.

Ian Stirling <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> J Houston <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>
>> "Moonshine" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>> news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>>> On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:57:36 +0000 (UTC), "J Houston"
>> <(E-Mail Removed)>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> If the buildings are only half a mile apart with suitable geography
>> wireless
>>> lan kit may be an option.
>>
>> Looking at Multimap, our two offices are over 500m apart as
>> the crow flies, with lots of buildings inbetween, right in the
>> heart of a big city centre. Is wireless really a workable solution
>> in these circumstances?
>
> If you can get line of sight (buildings tall enough, or a small mast
> would do) then it may be possible.
> Through one small building - maybe, if you'r lucky.
> Through several, probably not.
>
> I suspect you'd need to exceed the statutory EIRP limits to get a link.

Unless of course, you can get space on a roof in the middle of the link
that's tall enough to have line of sight between the buildings.

In article <bu5v7g$opq$(E-Mail Removed)>,
"J Houston" <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
> We have a Draytek Vigor 2600 Router which we use in the office to connect
> to the web, and our LAN is made up of about 18 PC's and a Windows
> 2003 Server. Our company still owns a smaller office about a half a mile
> away. We want to use that office for training, and so need to set up a LAN
> in the old office. Whats the best way to connect them? Another Draytek
> Vigor 2600 could give us a LAN to LAN VPN as I understand it, but
> is there any other way? What are leased lines?

For a similar application - two offices, but much further apart, I've set
both offices up with a Vigor 2600 and 512k ADSL. The VPN feature of the
2600's is a neat way of doing this totally transparently to the two office
LANs. It works very well as long as you don't plan to move too much data
via the link, or expect to do it too quickly. Remember that you'll never
get more than 256 kbps office to office - the uplink speed.

Some applications which, at first sight, might not appear to be moving
much data, might be doing so. Don't underestimate, with file sharing, the
amount of traffic which results from simply opening a folder with a lot of
entries.

For applications which are demanding in their use of the LAN (Sage Line
100 was one I had to cope with), it might be better to have a spare PC at
one office, remote controlled (by PC Anywhere, or VNC, or similar) from
the other over the Draytek 2600 - ADSL - Internet - ADSL - Draytek 2600
link.

The documentation at www.draytek.co.uk is very useful for setting up the
2600's for a VPN connection like this.

--
Tim Clark

"Tim Clark" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:5fr6ub.igm.ln@basil...
> In article <bu5v7g$opq$(E-Mail Removed)>,
>
> For a similar application - two offices, but much further apart, I've set
> both offices up with a Vigor 2600 and 512k ADSL. The VPN feature of the
> 2600's is a neat way of doing this totally transparently to the two office
> LANs. It works very well as long as you don't plan to move too much data
> via the link, or expect to do it too quickly. Remember that you'll never
> get more than 256 kbps office to office - the uplink speed.
>

If I have one LAN on the 192.168.0.xxx range and the other on the
192.168.1.xxx range will they intefere over the Vigor VPN? Would it
be better to make one of the LAN's totally different as in the exapmle on
the Draytek site, 10.10.0.xxx or something?

On your setup, can any workstation PC on one LAN 'see' the other
LAN no problem?


James H

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Adam Davies <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
> In article <bu5v7g$opq$(E-Mail Removed)>, (E-Mail Removed)
> says...
>> We have a Draytek Vigor 2600 Router which we use in the office to connect
>> to the web, and our LAN is made up of about 18 PC's and a Windows
>> 2003 Server. Our company still owns a smaller office about a half a mile
>> away. We want to use that office for training, and so need to set up a LAN
>> in the old office. Whats the best way to connect them? Another Draytek
>> Vigor 2600 could give us a LAN to LAN VPN as I understand it, but
>> is there any other way? What are leased lines?
>>
> what are leased lines: bloody expensive.
Absolutely. A leased line is a permannet point-to-point connection. Your
first year costs (connection charge and first year's rental) would exceed
GBP 10k for a 2 Mbps leased line from BT. See
http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/c....boo/12861.htm

> If you are on a budget then I would go for getting another 2600 router,
> depending on where you are you might be able to get sdsl rathen than
> adsl so that you uploads are the same speeds as your downloads which
> would help.

Once you're up into SDSL costs, you're already half way to leased line
costs, in order of magnitude terms. At that half way stage, it's worth
considering an old, but very useful service from BT, known as "EPS8", or
more fully, "Baseband Premier (EPS8)". Think of it as two pairs of wire
connecting two locations served by the same local exchange, achieved by
finding a couple of spare pairs at each location and then joining them
together at the exchange. There's no service provided over them - the
customer's responsible for connecting suitable equipment to make use of
the "raw" wire connection. See
http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/c..._.boo/0377.htm
in particular, sub-parts 1.1 and 1.6

The advantage is that it is a fair bit cheaper than BT "Megastream" leased
lines, at GBP 1120 installation and GBP 770 p.a. rental (if I've read the
BT Price List correctly.) The very big
disadvantage is that BT are not obliged to supply these EPS8 circuits and
will refuse to do so if there's a shortage of spare pairs, or if the
losses on the resulting link are too high. Since the resulting link _must_
go via the exchange, if the two offices are half a mile from each other,
but 4 miles from the local exchange, the resulting 8 mile link wouldn't be
any use. If you're particularly unlucky, the two offices are served by
different exchanges, so EPS8 can't be supplied. If you're very lucky and
the BT exchange is close to a line drawn between the two offices, such
that resulting link is not much more than half a mile, and BT are prepared
to supply EPS8 to you, it's definitely worth considering.

A quick Google search for "EPS8" and "baseband" threw up this site which
goes into more detail:
http://www.mutek.co.uk/acatalog/DSL_products.html
In fact it describes, with the aid of pictures, the situation better
than I have done above - I wish I had found it before writing the reply!

> If I have one LAN on the 192.168.0.xxx range and the other on the
> 192.168.1.xxx range will they intefere over the Vigor VPN? Would it
> be better to make one of the LAN's totally different as in the exapmle on
> the Draytek site, 10.10.0.xxx or something?
>
> On your setup, can any workstation PC on one LAN 'see' the other
> LAN no problem?
>
>
> James H

I have this setup between my home and office. Both run Vigor 2600's and 512k
ADSL. You should be able to use the 192.168.0.xxx range on one and the other
on the 192.168.1.xxx range, although with mine I use 10.0.X.X and 172.16.X.X
mainly because I open other VPN connections to other client sites using a
VPN software client (not the Vigor) and the 192.168.X.X config confues
things.

All works very well, and I can "see" the PC at home in my Office network
neighbourhood (my VPN is only one way, but you can do both) and ping the
router and the PC behind it. I have mapped a share (of my home PC) on the
office PC for convenience and the VPN is initiated as soon as I click that
share in Explorer (you don't need to do anything). You can have the VPN
"always on" also. I also use Windows Remote Desktop to remotely control the
home PC .. but AFAIK, only Win XP machines can be controlled, although you
can control them from a Win2K box (as I do) by downloading a plugin from MS.

Speed wise it's not bad at all. Remote Desktop has a slight delay, but it's
satisfactory for the brief tasks I need to do. Copying files is reasonable
too - unless you're in a real hurry.

I suggest you check out: http://www.draytek.co.uk/support/vpn_setup.html
(although it sounds like you already have). For any questions check out the
Draytek forum (there is a dedicated VPN board):
http://www.forum.draytek.co.uk/. Setup is very easy!

James H )