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Building Scalable Remote Access
by Mike Fratto Introduction Designing a remote-access solution for an enterprise-size organization requires a thorough understanding of many different factors. These include the unique information needs of each department using the solution; expected usage of remote access, including number of expected users; average usage per user or connection, as well as expected usage patterns; and the design and organizational constraints of your network. And often, all this is complicated by having to support multiple locations.
Like any modification to your network, thorough research and planning prior to building your infrastructure is essential. A remote-access solution requires more than adding a few modems to the network via Microsoft Corp.'s RAS. You must worry about authenticating users into the remote-access server and then onto the network. You must worry about supporting users who know little about modem communications and the associated paradigms. You must worry about the stability of patching pieces of a remote-node network together, parts of which you don't own or control, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
How do you address these worries? Since technology is improving at an incredible rate, detailed discussions about specific vendor solutions are likely to be quickly outdated. We'll go through more general concerns and methods for designing a remote-access solution, leaving vendor-related solutions for our reviews and features . The result of this process should be a Request For Comment (RFC) or Request For Proposal (RFP) that you can send to vendors.
Understanding An Organization's Function
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