[geeks] VPN Help needed...

[Mark Benson]

$work have developed a requirement to access parts of our company Intranet
at home. They have a small, very basic TCP/IP network with a Windows 2003
Server machine running our Intranet stuff. As our work from home will
involve handling confidential data, I figured an IPsec VPN would be the best
idea. Basically rendered down to it's most basic, we need to be able to
access a series of HTTP pages on out internal server using a secure
connection from outside. I can't bear the the thought of opening a Windows
server to the outside world either as a VPN server or hanging a web server
out into the cloud. I'd prefer to keep it well away behind a Firewall and
use a secure gateway in which, as I understand it, IPsec and VPN allow you
to do.

My big issue is that I know jack about VPN and how it works. I know I would
prefer a dedicated hardware solution, and from what I can see a dedicated
VPN firewall box isn't going to be startlingly expensive, and any cost would
be rapidly outweighed by our ability to do out of hours work at home.

I need to replace the DSL router at the same time anyway as our current one
is dying slowly (it keeps crashing in a heap and needs power cycling, last
time it did it it took down the DHCP and everything and rendered out whole
LAN crippled). I figure either a decent DSL router and a dedicated VPN
router, or a combined DSL Router/Firewall/VPN box would do the trick. Again
though I'm not clued up on what I need and what companies to look at. I
picked out a Linksys VPN Router, and a NETGEAR DSL/VPN Router. NETGEAR
require the use of the NETGEAR client which is licensed per client
accessing, and extra licenses cost. The Linksys apparently works with the XP
and Vista VPN clients, and requires no extra client license cost.

I just need some guidance and advice from those of you who have dealt with
this kind of system. All help greatly appreciated, and boy do I need it!!
=o)

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Mark Benson