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Alternative to VPN?

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    Alternative to VPN?

    I've run across an interesting alternative to a VPN (painfully slow) set-up for an application deployed and shared by remote sites.
    I have an A5V7 app with a 10 seat run-time license in use by a home builder with one corporate office and three remote offices. In the past, I have relied on a very slow VPN tunnel for connectivity.
    In looking for alternatives, I ran across xdrive (www.xdrive.com), a service that offers a web based mappable drive with 5 Gigs free space.
    I loaded the program on xdrive, mapped and mounted the drive on various machines, shadowed the database and viola! relatively fast (extremely fast be VPN standards) connectivity!
    Anyone else had any experience with net based drives? Any downsides found?

    -Rick Hamilton

    #2
    Re: Alternative to VPN?

    I just tried netdrive with no success. I hope you are right.

    Dave
    Dave Mason
    [email protected]
    Skype is dave.mason46

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Alternative to VPN?

      Using a Linksys VPN router with it's client, then use remote desktop. Speed is just like being at office. Even when having laptop connected to a phone.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Alternative to VPN?

        Jack,

        I think the idea here is to have a web based database to support 2 companies at different locations that may have 10 users each. Not that a website could not be done, but we want the users to think they are working on data inside their store. I have used vpn before. Looking for an alternative without having to make a website with all the other work I need to do.

        Dave
        Dave Mason
        [email protected]
        Skype is dave.mason46

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Alternative to VPN?

          I've used the remote desktop features before and they work very well, but only allow one user on at a time. I need to allow at least 5 users at a time and possibly up to 10. This seems to work well so far.
          I have spent 10 years developing this application and will eventually re-write it as a WAS app, but this seems to be a good interim fix.
          -Rick

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Alternative to VPN?

            Originally posted by rhamilton View Post
            I've used the remote desktop features before and they work very well, but only allow one user on at a time. I need to allow at least 5 users at a time and possibly up to 10. This seems to work well so far.
            I have spent 10 years developing this application and will eventually re-write it as a WAS app, but this seems to be a good interim fix.
            -Rick

            Rick

            I'm confused - perhaps semantics...

            MS Remote Desktop Connection will allow only one user per login name, but will allow multiple users with different logins - within the limitation of the OS. XP will allow 10 - while server versions will allow as many as the CAL's you have - and computer power....


            Or is there something else that you are talking about?

            I'm also confused about the speed of the VPN that you refer to. VPN is a method of securing the communication over the open internet, but the overall speed is determined by the connection upload and download speed. The overhead of a VPN should not be more than 10% - unless it's a really bad VPN...
            Al Buchholz
            Bookwood Systems, LTD
            Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

            Occam's Razor - KISS
            Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
            Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
            When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
            "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
            Albert Einstein

            http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Alternative to VPN?

              I found netdrive limited by 8 char filenames. Just installed webdrive. So far using 1 user seems ok. I am about to shadow and try multiuser. Will let you know what happens.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Alternative to VPN?

                I have not used this - but it looks interesting.

                http://www.thinsoftinc.com/index.aspx

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Alternative to VPN?

                  Well so far web drive seems to be a solution. You do need to be running on a high speed connection. It gives me a stop gap solution untill I can develop a web version.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Alternative to VPN?

                    John

                    Interesting that a fast internet connection now usually has a great upload speed, but usually has a slow download speed.

                    Do you have the specs on what your connection speeds are - both ways?

                    With an internal network I've suggested to clients that they have at least a 100 mb network. The gb is even better.. if you can afford it.

                    I can't imagine that the speed via the internet approaches that....

                    But you always have to love this industry. The only thing that stays the same is that it keeps changing....
                    Al Buchholz
                    Bookwood Systems, LTD
                    Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

                    Occam's Razor - KISS
                    Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
                    Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
                    When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
                    "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
                    Albert Einstein

                    http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Alternative to VPN?

                      I'll checkout the speeds. I'm using roadrunner with a cable modem at the fastest speed they can give me.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Alternative to VPN?

                        John et al,

                        This has been covered many time before on this board. You can not realistically share any table of the database over a WAN (meaning relatively slow round trip data times compared to a LAN) if Alpha is being used as a desktop application (in other words, not the WAS).

                        The locking/unlocking for record access will take an immense amount of time compared to a LAN and will slow everyone sharing that table at that moment (by a factor of 100 to 2000 by my estimates for typical cable modem rates). If you only access 1 record (and we are talking any access of a record, whether by a find, query, lookup whatever) it may not matter much. However most operations access whole tables (e.g. queries, reports, lookups, etc) and these cause an incredible degradation for all users in speed for each record accessed of the shared tables.

                        If you need to access remotely, use a remote desktop program like PCAnywhere, UltraVNC or it's variants, GoToMyPC, Citrix Server or similar where you are just viewing and controlling a computer on the LAN remotely.

                        VPN can be used to encrypt the data transmission no matter what the access method with only the overhead of encryption/decryption slowing it by a small amount, and is not usually relevant.
                        Regards,

                        Ira J. Perlow
                        Computer Systems Design


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                          #13
                          Re: Alternative to VPN?

                          Terminal server on Windows Server 2003 is the best solution. Easy to set up and will support 10 concurrent users plus easily.

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