I am the sole IT manager for my company. We have three locations and use VPN heavily. Some of my problems are inherited from the previous IT guy and the lack of spending that was going on in his day.
Currently the company has two VPN solutions, none of which is working 100%.
The Nortel Contivity 1500 was the old solution. The upside is that it is only solution that even remotely works with satellite employees(I’ll explain more later). The downside is that it randomly drops people with no apparent reason. I also have no support contract remaining on this box.
The new solution is Windows 2K3 Routing and Remote access. The upside is wired employees have virtually no complaints. They can stay up for days. Plus the setup costs were nill. The downside is that wireless 802.11a/b/g employees are having difficulty staying connected, myself included. Personally, I can’t stay connected for more than 10 minutes before getting kicked. My one Satellite employee can not connect at all. I even had MS on the phone and they could not figure out how to get it to work. Not to mention that support for this VPN costs me $275 a pop!
My one problem child, as I’m sure many of you IT people can guess, is my CEO. He is the lone satellite user who is also trying to use 802.11b behind that. So it’s like a double whamy for my VPN.
My VPN is causing me more work than it should be. Bigger companies would have to have a more reliable solution for employees to connect. People are allowed to access from home on PCs I have no control over and can’t standardize what hardware, software, and network equipment they can use.
I’ve read about a product called V-One that specializes in satellite VPN. That’s great but how well will it support my other users?
I’m looking for any advice on how bigger or similar sized companies are handling their VPN solution.
Thanks for your help,
Mike
