I have a question about the various types of VPN....
Current scenario: My client is using some really old Kentrox routers and has a site-to-site VPN setup for one remote office (3 users) and one remote user that works at home and all the main office employees - sometimes they like to work at home and all connect to the RDP server as well (however...the main office workers don't connect via VPN - they connect straight from the public IP address - yikes!). These remote users pretty much do RDP into a terminal server (RDP is setup with the local IP address of the TS Server).
This has been working well for a couple of years. Hardly any issues with VPN. Pretty much just runs and never stops (unless there is a power outage or a cable comes out). But, whoever set this up, it's a bit of a security concern, and they have 4 Windows 2003 servers with TS on them for all the users to log into. No...there is no load balancing. He pretty much assigned them: You, User A - you'll goto this server. User B, C, D - you'll go here. User E, F, G - you'll go here. Four servers. C'mon.
My client wants to consolidate this. It's a waste of resources and money for all the TS licenses. The main office workers (who RDP from home) would love to get to their desktop (or their My Documents that is stored on the server). Not RDP into a server - they feel like they have two desktops (well, they do - their machine in the office, and the RDP Server).
So that's my current situation now.
Proposed solution:
Eliminate TS Services and retire these 4 old servers and use one good server I have for remote stuff (if needed).
A VPN connection whereas the remote office users and the one user at home (with a company supplied computer) can use their client/server apps on their local computer. Have access (mapped drive perhaps) to their My Documents on the server, and access (mapped drives) to other drives shared on the server. I don't worry about email since their email is hosted by a 3rd party company.
A friend of mine who works for a corp has a similar setup. He has several client/server apps he uses. His email is in-house Exchange, and all their resources are on an Intranet. He can pretty much be anywhere he wants to be, as long as he has an Internet connection - and no VPN client installed, no website to log into and install this or that. Just an Internet connection - and he can browser the Intranet, browse the mapped drives, use his client/server apps with no problems, get his email, send email, access network resources. As if he's just in the office doing all this. And for all I know, he could be at some Intranet cafe in Hong Kong or at my house - he just needs an Internet connection.
So first - what type of setup is this? I'm not a VPN expert here. I can setup a simple VPN, but what my friend has - I haven't been able to figure it out. Is it SSL VPN? I'd love a setup like this for the remote workers. I'm dealing with very very non-technical people so anything more than 3 steps for them to connect - it won't work. Right now, I'm testing a proof of concept of Cloud Networking with Pertino.
What do you think? Thank you in advance for reading and replying....