Help me design a remote office setup

lemon_fresh

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Oct 14, 2004
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Ok here's the deal:
Client is moving sales staff into new office across the street. Of course the desire is to share files between the two locations. 'Net connections are/will be static DSL 3mb/768k. Current office is running a single domain w/ SBS 2003 25 Cals total. New office will have 12 people tops.

What I'm thinking so far:
Sonicwall VPNs boxes at both sites for secure sharing.

Where I'm having trouble deciding:
Should I set up the new office w/ it's own domain? If so, CALs get to be a pain/expensive. Could I xfer some CALS from the existing domain?
Or should I just go w/ a low cost NAS / Storage server?
Or just stick w/ the VPN, the single domain and server and just let them deal w/ the latency from everyone hitting up there 768k with all of the file sharing?

What do you think?
 
itburnswhenipee said:
Have you considered a wireless bridge? It might be cheaper than setting up all that extra infrastructure.

I was thinking of suggesting this as well.

I also thought about a MAN, but coming up with the $50k to get the lines installed/dug can sometimes complicate that setup.
 
itburnswhenipee said:
Have you considered a wireless bridge? It might be cheaper than setting up all that extra infrastructure.
I have considered Wireless, but I don't think it will work due to:
Bandwidth issues with the file sharing.
General flakiness of wireless, as I don't think I could get them mounted high enough to keep street traffic from interfering.
Security
 
KNYTE said:
I was thinking of suggesting this as well.

I also thought about a MAN, but coming up with the $50k to get the lines installed/dug can sometimes complicate that setup.

For that price I could run fiber between the two offices. A city street separates the two buildings, other wise I'd be pricing out a fiber run and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
 
I'd section off the new kids into their own domain and establish a trust between the two to start. After that, it depends on what kind of files you're swapping back and forth over this network.
 
lemon_fresh said:
For that price I could run fiber between the two offices. A city street separates the two buildings, other wise I'd be pricing out a fiber run and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

That's what I was referring to with the MAN. Running a fat pipe between the two offices so you basically have one big LAN setup as far as the infrastructure/users are concerned.

The wireless bridge is the same kind of setup actually, just cheaper and slightly less secure.
 
lemon_fresh said:
I have considered Wireless, but I don't think it will work due to:
Bandwidth issues with the file sharing.
General flakiness of wireless, as I don't think I could get them mounted high enough to keep street traffic from interfering.
Security

Bandwidth issues? So you'd rather try to choke all your files through a 768k connection?

As far as traffic interference: you could use rooftop mounted directional antenna. Security is something else, though. I wonder if it'd be possible to have the two stations use a securid-like system to make sure they were only talking to one another.
 
itburnswhenipee said:
Bandwidth issues? So you'd rather try to choke all your files through a 768k connection?
Which is why a second server for the remote offices file needs would be preferred as there will only be two "super" users from the main office dropping/opening files from the remote site.

itburnswhenipee said:
As far as traffic interference: you could use rooftop mounted directional antenna. Security is something else, though. I wonder if it'd be possible to have the two stations use a securid-like system to make sure they were only talking to one another.
Actually, I'm looking at some wireless options as I type. So maybe....
 
Hmm, ok how's this sound
1. Server 2003 for file storage and as a backup Domain controller.
2. RadioLAN Wireless BridgeLink Lite Model 397 for linkage between two buildings
http://www.radiolan.com/products.html
3. DSL connections on both sides for internet

This should:
Eliminate the CAL issue, as the CALs will remain on the domain controller.
Keep the link between the two sites independent of the internet connection.
Give me a little less than 10Mbps between the tow buildings.
Keeps costs in line with the VPN solution ~$2k for HW & configuration
 
for speed yep, probably the best will be wireless. The way I would do it is via wpa or wpa2, and then after that use vpn just in case but thats overkill in a way. You can just make an open connection but make the data connection via vpn. i see that done alot and it seems to be fine.
 
1) Local storage at the new office.

2) Since it's SBS you can't add another domain controller and it's not really needed anyway.

3) Don't use Sonicwalls. I used to sell them, and used them to do what you are doing now. They are too unreliable.