We are setting up a US office in addition to our UK office, and we are looking at various methods of linking the two - in particular accessing our email and database systems.

We use filemaker server 5.5

- We have all the users in the US office using remote desktop to connect to our systems

OR

- We set up a VPN so users can use outlook through our VPN

What sort of performance would you get, using filemaker over a VPN?

What sort of connection speed would we need?

What VPN software would I need?

Another option is to create a web interface for the database using filemaker unlimited.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Ben

remote desktop will give you the best performance with the least amount of work.

direct remote access to FMS 5.5 will be very slow. Web enabling is a lot of work.

Remote Desktop is probably correct.

I, however, use PC Anywhere to remotely access my solution. While I do have to take over one of my computers, I can do remote printing...

The advantage of this approach (probably the same as Remote Desktop) is that you are only transmitting key strokes, not all the data. You'll have to assess the security issue your self.

Please post if you get VPN going and your result, as I too have considered that approach.

VPN and remote desktop work fine, keystrokes and screen is transmitted only, since FileMaker runs on the terminal server in the UK.

One glitch, printing extensive/complex documents over remote desktop on a remote printer (shared to the server) will take a while, because printer-data will have to travel over the internet to you remote printer.

One client I have has a DSL line 2Mb in the main office and regluar ASDL lines on the branches. Total 25 remote users and a couple of printers. (Office w/ Outlook as well).

That runs fine...

We've been using a VPN to connect our two offices here in Vancouver, BC for a couple years now. I think most database solutions would run fine over the VPN.. ours performed ok with a 900kbps upload from our server.

Once we wanted to implement this scheduling calendar from Cleveland Consulting however, it was really just too slow(it's a really complicated solution).. so we're currently waiting to get setup on a 2.5Mbps SDSL line.

We were also considering using remote desktop instead of having clients access FM over a VPN.. but I just couldn't be sure of how secure that would be, compared to using the VPN. I think one suggestion we got was to use remote desktop over the VPN.. but I haven't explored that yet.

Another solution that was recommended.. is this plugin for Filemaker called SyncDek(from worldsync.com). I haven't had the time to really explore this.. it looks promising but also really complicated(i'm no expert). Also probably not the cheapest implementation.

Whoa and I just realized this thread is 6 months old.

Anyway.. Filemaker Canada connects to their main branch in California using Citrix.. but I believe they were also checking out SyncDek the last time I spoke with them.