Thread: Q for the IT Savvy out there

I don't have a massive interest in IT, so to my detriment alot of things go right over my head. I know there are a lot of SM members who are IT savvy so thought I'd post this up and ask for your advice please.

If a person was looking at setting up a new business, with offices in two separate States, what would be the most efficient method of setting up a computer system so that both States could view in real time ? By efficient, my priority would be speed of data transfer, cost of access and back up of data when times zones can be up to 3 hours apart.

It has been suggested to me that external parties can maintain all programs and files, backed up nightly, and the two States would simply dial in to the external parties server via the net. I've done a quick search but can't seem to nail down a specific provider.

Any help and opinions for this less-than IT guru appreciated .

Thanks

I'm not an IT guru but I've done this before for my own business with multiple offices in different cities. You need a VPN (virtual private network) between both sites. Think of a VPN like a secure tunnel through the internet. A VPN will allow remote computers to act like they are on the same network. Then decide if you want to host your own servers or contract this out to a 3rd party. This means will your database be located on a server physically located in 1 of your offices or will it be located off site in a data centre somewhere. If the IT requirements are simple then it might be more cost effective for you to host your own server/'s. If it's a complicated set-up then 3rd party hosting will probably be the better option for you. Also a lot depends on your budget. In all honesty this is the point that you probably need to pay a consultant to plan & manage the process for you, that's what I did.

Thanks for the advice Tranq.

So I take it there are specific VPN providers, or is that through an internet provider that provides you with a VPN ?

The amount of information will not be immense, but if you've ever been stuck with slow line speed connection, it makes doing business hard, frustrating and inefficient. i want to avoid that, hence the pondering of a 3rd party provider that may have the edge in terms of being able to provide this.

Any corporate orientated ISP should be able to provide you with a VPN. Alternatively they can be set-up & administered in-house. You can either buy dedicated VPN hardware which sits at each site or install a VPN client (software) on a cheap linux box to do the same job, again you need 1 at each end of the connection. You should look into each option & way up cost/benefit etc.

The speed issue is another problem all together & ultimately comes down to 2 things; 1) What type of connections are available in your area. 2) How much do you want to spend. Hopefully you're in a location which offers more then just the standard residential type ADSL connection, these type of connections are usually a poor choice for business because they run at different speeds depending on which way the traffic is going. You've probably seen connections referred to as something like 1500/256, these 2 numbers represent the speed the data packets travel in each direction, the first number being the download & the second number being the upload. So in the case of 1500/256 ADSL the download speed is roughly 6 times faster then the upload speed. In a business environment where you are sending files back & forth over the connection a slow upload speed is a problem. For maximum efficiency you should have symmetrical connections, meaning the data packets travel at the same speed in both directions. A good starting point might be a 1Mb/1Mb SHDSL connection at each office. This would give you a moderately fast VPN + allow you to do some other cool stuff like run a couple of VOIP (voice over internet protocol) lines over the connection.

All internet connections are not created equal. If you use a corporate ISP you'll get a better quality connection then if you go with a consumer type ISP (telstra, iinet, westnet, tpg etc). The reason is contention ratio, contention ratio is how many times the ISP sells the same bandwidth. ISP's make their money by overselling their services, because they know that not everyone is going to be trying to use the service at the same time. Telstra is known to sell their consumer lines at around 50:1, that means for every 1Mb of speed that telstra owns they connect 50Mb of service. A corporate ISP might have a contention ratio of 20:1, once you start getting below a 10:1 ratio the price goes through the roof.

One last thing to mention are SLA's (service level agreement's), a good corporate ISP will give you an SLA on their service. It's normally a percentage, often 95%, meaning that the ISP guarantee's that the service will be available 95% of the time during any billing cycle. If they break the agreement then the monthly fee is discounted.

Yep what Tranq said.

look one of my best friends connected 2 video-easy outlests through 2 telephone lines on dialup... it was a database and 1 was one way, the other was back and between 2-3 stores it works great for simple database retrieval (central database) and yes that was years ago...

a vpn would be even better, but just saying, you can keep it simple stupid if you wanted...

just imagine what could be done over adsl2... and its so cheap. Its more than achieveable, just makes sure your not getting screwed for the implementation, because i assure you its not difficult at all.

point being on a dialup is... is 100% secure, its not using a 3rd party internet connection. So if your not paying for fancy software and using a VPN, don't over complicate things. Speed is only relative and a simple database search query is so achieveable on ANY speed (because the computation is local and only the resultset is sent)

but hey what would i know, i only been using pc's for 17yrs and was among the first 200,000 users on the internet.

if you want a million users accessing at once, you'll need a million responses per second, that server will cost a shitload of cash to fund its lease... i don't think you'd need that.

Basically what the guys said above. A VPN setup with Business ADSL plan but big dollars. C_T is correct in what hes saying as well. It really depends what you want to do with the connection between the 2 offices.

Damn, everyone already said it.

When talking to ISPs though - don't forget to discuss VOIP for your phone services.

Your businesses will be able to call eachother for free, any local or national number for free and really cheap overseas. For a pretty low monthly cost. I set up my home system and a mate's small business using VOIP - $15 per phone number (monthly) with free local, free national and reasonably cheap mobile.

Plus you can ask for a sydney phone number that will ring in your brisbane office if you wish to.

Originally Posted by C_T

look one of my best friends connected 2 video-easy outlests through 2 telephone lines on dialup... it was a database and 1 was one way, the other was back and between 2-3 stores it works great for simple database retrieval (central database) and yes that was years ago...

a vpn would be even better, but just saying, you can keep it simple stupid if you wanted...

just imagine what could be done over adsl2... and its so cheap. Its more than achieveable, just makes sure your not getting screwed for the implementation, because i assure you its not difficult at all.

point being on a dialup is... is 100% secure, its not using a 3rd party internet connection. So if your not paying for fancy software and using a VPN, don't over complicate things. Speed is only relative and a simple database search query is so achieveable on ANY speed (because the computation is local and only the resultset is sent)

but hey what would i know, i only been using pc's for 17yrs and was among the first 200,000 users on the internet.

Plus you get to hear the sexy phoneline handshake everytime you dial up!

Man haven't heard that noise in a while!

Thanks for all the great advice guys. I'll go away and do the homework and if I hit any snags will post up some more Q's.

Thanks again !