Long Range Networking

[merkel04]

Hello, I am wanting to network three of my offices together. They are all located about 50 miles apart. All I want to do is have a program running that would be accessable by all offices in the different locations, and be able to run and edit different files that are included in the program. If anyone could explain the easiest and most cost effective way of doing this, that would be great.
Thank you,
-Brian

[Sterling_Aug]

Hire a consulting firm that specializes in networking a WAN (wide area network) then open up your pocket book and watch the money drian out.

[Midknyte]

you can setup VPNs between your offices, but you would definitely want some consultant to give you the details/options.

[delRhode]

Easiest and most cost effective? Broadband internet connections for the three offices, with VPN routers at each one, set up for two VPN tunnels back to the 'central' office (where the server holding the program and most employees would live) and the 'branch' offices. You still get the joy/pain of figuring out how to tell the machines in the branch offices where the central server is, but total hardware costs are pretty low.

The problem with this, however, is the speed of the connections. Operating on files from the branch office may well be so sluggish that the end-user(s) consider it unworkable... but if you've already got the broadband internet connections, it would take something less than $300 to give it a shot.

[chuckbiskut]

You could use Smoothwall. Its a firewall and VPN and several other things in one. It had a nice interface and you can use it on an old PII system and still run great. Depends on what kind of connection you have. I have seen it used in a large business between 6-8 different locations. www.smoothwall.org
Im sorry if we are not allowed to put links in. Its been a while since I have read the forums rules.

Chuck