[SunRescue] OT:VPN WAN's

[Brian Dunbar]

I'm not a security or VPN or WAN expert, but I've dabbled in all 3.  Having
said that;

Using the public net as a transport for your critical IS stuff seems fraught
with .. not danger, perhaps, but a bit of risk.  There isn't any one person
you can go to if MAE West is not sending your packets on,  or if things just
seem a bit slow.  If you spend the money on a frame relay, you have one
vendor, and a dedicated circuit.

I dunno, but from dealing with the decision makers at my company, I'd bet
that your guys gulped at the cost of the frame relay, and decided that if
each site/business unit pays for the cost of their own ISP and connection,
it eases the cost a bit.  My intuition is that the cost of 200 sites paying
for their own connection, plus associated hassle, equals or exceeds the cost
of a frame relay circuit.

Had you considered an alternate, like yipes!?  They run Ethernet over fiber,
costs seem comparable.

brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Hatle, Steven J. [mailto:shatle at vue.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2001 4:58 PM
To: 'rescue at sunhelp.org'
Subject: [SunRescue] OT:VPN WAN's


All,

Pardon my digression, but I'd rather get the scoop from you guys than wade
through a bunch of sales droids.

Our company needs to put together a WAN encompassing 200 US cities. Mgmt.
would like to use the 'Net as our transport, instead of a frame-relay
network because of cost. A requirement of the WAN (frame or 'net) is to
support Windows authentication (PDC/BDC), management, software updates,
email, remote control, etc. No technical users would be at these sites- we'd
have to do a ton from here, so simplicity and supportability are key.

Are there viable VPN solutions to provide this functionality over the 'net?
Any hints, recommendations or commiseration is welcome.

TIA,

Steve

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Steve Hatle
VUE - a Pearson company
shatle at vue.com
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