Looking for good VPN Informaton

[Wanabe]

Can anyone recommend a good link(s) for VPN capability information?

I have a branch office that I'd like to connect to the corperate office via VPN and I want to make sure I understand the new capabilites that users at the branch office will have.

-Can I make computers at our branch office part of our corp.? They are currently just in a workgroup configuration.
-Will users be able to log into the corp domain directly through the VPN from the branch office?
-Will I be able to view/manage branch computers from corp. as if they were on the local corporate LAN?
-Do things such as Symantec Server work over a VPN (Auto Virus Signature Updates)?
- When users at the branch office access the Internet, are they going through the corp. gateway or their local gatway?

As you can see, I have many questions.

Any help would be appreciated.

As always, thanks!

Wanabe

[TwoRails]

Can't find the "Subscribe To" button on the new layout (yet..). Just posting to "subscribe."

[mbossman2]

Originally Posted by Wanabe Can anyone recommend a good link(s) for VPN capability information?

www.cisco.com/go/vpn

read thru the whitepapers there.

Originally Posted by Wanabe -Can I make computers at our branch office part of our corp.? They are currently just in a workgroup configuration.

yes, if you set it that way...as they login to the VPN domain they are viewed as part of the overall corporate domain.

Originally Posted by Wanabe -Will users be able to log into the corp domain directly through the VPN from the branch office?

yes, if you set it that way.

Originally Posted by Wanabe -Will I be able to view/manage branch computers from corp. as if they were on the local corporate LAN?

yes, if you set it that way.

Originally Posted by Wanabe -Do things such as Symantec Server work over a VPN (Auto Virus Signature Updates)?

yes and in fact highly recommended...it happens to me when i log in over a high speed connection.

Originally Posted by Wanabe - When users at the branch office access the Internet, are they going through the corp. gateway or their local gatway?

you can go either way. You can set up split tunnelling (only traffic destined for the corporate VPN address(es) get encrypted and sent, all other traffic goes like normal i-net traffic) or you can block that function and have all traffic swing thru the corp network (good if you have some blocking and filtering in place...downside is that you increase the traffic on the main sites i-net access line so make sure that you factor that into your bandwidth considerations)

Keep in mind that while VPN is a huge cost savings, the dynamic latency of the internet can wreak havoc on latency sensitive application so you will want to run a pilot: some people in the branch office running on VPN and some on the existing (?) WAN circuit until you get a sense of the impact (if any).

Depending upon the number people in the branch office, you will probably want to resist the urge to go client based VPN (client software on each machine doing the encrypt/decrypt) that is a headache to manage, you are better off doing a site to site VPN (device at CO and device at BO, let those do the encrypt/decrypt and authorization) + as you make VPN available to your mobile workers (or people who have the urge to work from home) it makes management a bit easier.

[Wanabe]

Thanks mbossman2 for the info. and heads-up.

Wanabe