I provide IT administration a small company which currently has about 10 employees working at the central office in addition to 30-40 employees who only use the e-mail portion of our network using a POP3 client.
We are hoping to move out of our present physical office and, in order to reduce overhead considerably, convert our business to a “virtual office” environment, running the LAN from someone’s home and having everyone connect through VPN using our SonicWALL Pro firewall (which is already set up).
Our network infrastructure consists of one NT 4 Server which functions as a PDC/file/print server and one NT 4 Server running Exchange 5.5.
Ultimately, I want to have about 15 users accessing our network from their homes via VPN andthe rest simply continuing to access Exchange through their POP clients. The VPN users will mainly be working with MS Office applications and QuickBooks and utilizing the Exchange server to transmit e-mail and work with public folders. FTP may be a possible future development.
Keeping in mind that low cost is key, does it seem reasonable to run the LAN from someone’s home, or is there a better solution that is still low-cost as compared with working in an actual office? What breed of broadband is recommended? Will cable modem be sufficient, or do I need to go with xDSL or possibly even a fractional T1? Will I need to purchase a router or should the connectivity provider be able to handle my routing needs? Is there any additional equipment or software I should consider for the protection/stability of the server environment and/or the remote users?
Any suggestions that can be made relating to this scenario would be greatly appreciated. If any of you have dealt with similar situations, please share your thoughts.
Thanks.