Hi Freddie,

>For now I am looking out for ways in which I can have access to remote data over the internet. Such as a branch office from where I can copy a data file. Or maybe upload a data file to the remote system.

To access data in a remote office or from a remote office, you need to establish a VPN connection of some sort. There are two issues to solve:

First, in order to connect to the other computer, you need a name or an IP address. If you don't have a static IP address, you can use a dynamic DNS service. Prices for these services range from free to quite expensive. Check out www.dyndns.org for starters.

Second, you need the VPN channel. If both office branchs are running Windows 2000 or higher, the easiest and reasonable secure solution is to use the built-in VPN feature of Windows. if you use the Windows wizard to create new network connection, pick "incoming connection" on one machine, and "connect to a VPN" on the other machine. With MS VPN it's very important that all accounts use strong passwords. The Microsoft web site has tons of information on setting up a VPN.

An alternative would be two routers that can create a VPN channel using IPSec.

When the VPN connection is established, you can connect to the remote machine by mapping a drive.