Remote Access & Office LinkUps

Modern technology has enabled computers to be networked all over the world. Most of us think of a network as a collection of computers in our offices, but networks can be much wider spread than that. Wide Area Networks (WAN's) are collections of machines connected up using various technologies, which may be spread from one end of the world to the other. The largest WAN is of course the Internet.

By linking your laptop (if you are on the move), your desktop PC (if you are working from home) or from one office to another, you can create your own WAN. This enables you to do the following:

• Work from home as though you were sitting at your desk in the office
• Collect email from the office while on the move (or away on holiday
• Link two networked offices together into one bigger network

The main problem with this sort of networking is that the speed of the link involved is normally much slower than your main office network. Typically the speed of the main network will range from 10 million bits per second (Mbps) to 100Mbps. Links between home users and the office, or between offices can be anything upwards of 33 thousand bps (Kbps). I.e. Dramatically slower. The speed of connection into the office via a mobile phone is normally only about 9600bps at the moment.

The main reason for the slowness of these links is the cost. The majority of us cannot afford the enormous fees involved in having a 100Mbps link across the country. So a slower link is better than none at all. Having a link into the office in place (usually via a phone line) allows you to work from home as though you were at work. You can normally load and save files, check and send email etc.

The other benefit of having a remote access system (RAS) is that it enables your IT consultants - such as Yellowstone - to access individual machines from outside the building. This enables remote support to be set up easily, normally saving site visits and getting you back up and running much more rapidly. This is obviously not the case if the fault is due to a hardware problem though.

Yellowstone has experience of linking machines and creating WAN's in many circumstances. Common requirements are:

• Connecting a laptop to the office from anywhere in the world via a mobile phone
• Connecting a laptop or home PC to a corporate network using standard phone lines or ISDN
• Linking one office to another using ISDN
• Linking offices via leased lines
• Linking offices together using the Internet as a backbone
• Linking a PC from home into work using the Internet as a backbone
• Linking offices together using ADSL or DSL technologies

Yellowstone can provide a solution to all your remote access and office link-up needs, including arranging the leased lines with the appropriate carriers. Contact us for further details.