Currently we run a Smoothwall Corporate Server firewall behind a CISCO firewall (a little paranoia can be healthy).
Smoothwall's primary function is to serve L2TP/IPSEC VPN tunnels to remote workers and manage port forwarding.
Over the last 7 months we have seen a lot of our reps change their domestic broadband packages and VPN passthrough seems to be flaky to non-existent with certain ISPs.
As such, what are the alternatives that can work for remote access across almost any connection ?
Shold I be looking at a browser based 'Go to my PC' or 'Log Me In' type of setup ?
Before anyone corrects me on that point, I realise that 'Go to my PC' or 'Log Me In' are not the same as VPN tunnelling, but you get the idea.
Many UK ISPs have forcibly removed VPN features from their routers and I need to look at a common solution to roll out regardless of which ISP/cable/DSL package is being used.
I had even thought of SSH tunneling VNC sessions with Windows account logins to a single machine to allow remote access.
Reps need to be able to run an IMS application through the tunnel - email is less of an issue now that we have OWA set up and locked down, but I would still prefer people to be using outlook over VPN rather than web based Outlook.
I've not looked at the client software side of things yet, since I am assuming using different client VPN software will have no effect on how the traffic is allowed by the ISP. is there a solution that somehow masks the fact that it's VPN, thus allowing traffic to flow through those ISPs who really want you to pay for corporate level accounts for occasional VPN access (usually less than an hour every other week day).
So, thoughts ?
Suggestions ?
It needs to be user friendly for the reps - most of them can't be trusted to set anything up beyond inserting a memory stick into a USB port...
Use will be confined to Outlook synchronising and runnig client to server IMS software - later this year that will extend to remote accessing SAP Business one, but I'll cross that bridge...
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