# Looking for best Remote office connectivity solution



## Silvrrwulf (Aug 6, 2004)

Hi all! I have a client who's opening up a satellite office in another city. We're investigating a few options to have that office and the central one connected. We've tried multiple ideas before launch, and found this:

1) VPN. We have a hardware vpn tunnel there already, but the spreadsheets that they're retrieving from the server are about 5 meg a pop, which leads to a long wait time when they either open them directly from, or drag them and drop them from, the server. Typically it's a minute or two wait time. As we will be adding users, this time will only increase.

2) Terminal Server. This seems to be a great way to go, drastically reducing wait times to open items as they're all local. The glitch here comes with PDF documents. The screen refresh for TS is slow, so as the satellite user is scrolling down though a large pdf, it's a VERY slow process, and her screen redraws page by page on her system. 

3) ??? I'm out of ideas. Is there anyone who operates a WAN that could point me in a direction? 

Thanks!

~Lance


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## Squashman (Apr 4, 2003)

What is the connection speeds at both locations. Doesn't sound like you have enough bandwidth.


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## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

Squashman pointed me to this thread.

So I have a question, do you know what the latency is between sites. This is probably more important than bandwidth in many circumstances. But it is still a good idea to know what your bandwidth pipe is both up and down at each site.

Another consideration is if fragmentation is occuring and which device is doing the re-assembly.


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## Silvrrwulf (Aug 6, 2004)

Hey Guys! Sorry for the delay in responding - looks like my email notification didn't email me. I really appreciate your help.

The new office isn't technically setup yet, but one user has been working form home. Here's some speedtest.net results:

(this was done in the middleof work house, under normal office load).
Home Office
5.76 down
.33 up (!)

I'll find out from the owner our internet options, which in this rural location, are limited. 
Will post her result form her home office as soon as possible.

Thanks so much for your help guys. I owe ya one.
ping 119


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## Silvrrwulf (Aug 6, 2004)

Her stats are: 

Dl - 5.8
Up - 0.88
Ping - 20

Yeah - We're not working with much : (.


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## zx10guy (Mar 30, 2008)

Well, the upload speeds on both ends is what is going to kill your performance in terms of throughput. The checks you did is probably hitting a site like speedtest.net. The ping number you got for both ends isn't really relevant here. To check performance due to latency, you have to ping from one end of the VPN tunnel to a device on the other end. Latency can cause performance issues hence why there is a whole class of network appliances out there dedicated to just optimize WAN connectivity.


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## Silvrrwulf (Aug 6, 2004)

Thanks Zx! I'll try that : )


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