>We are looking to have some people dialin to use SBT. We are going to have DSL links between the sites. We are considering PCAnywhere for 4-6 people accessing. Then possibly Windows Terminal Server when it gets beyound the 6.
>
>What would be your suggestions for a 4-6, possibly 8-10 in the future, remote solution?
>

I'd need more information to adequately address the issue. WTS is a possible solution. I've not evaluated the client's needs to interconnect their offices, the data volume involved, how much information exchange and data sharing inter- and intra-office exists, communications costs or any of a large number of other factors. I know of a reliable consultant you could hire to do the necessary study and ask all the right questions... < g >

>Have you heard of a problem of PCAnywhere not being able to connect to a site that is on the same router as you. I was by someone that they had problems connecting to another person if their DSL providers were the same and they went thru the same router.
>

I've not run into the problem, but the issue would probably be one of how the sites were interconnected and node locations specified. I'd say that the problem is not inherently one of PCAnywhere not being able to connect to another node on the same subnet, since you can use PCAnywhere between two nodes of a LAN, on the same segment or on different segments connected through a router or series of routers, as long as address resolution could be accomplished properly - maybe other IP networking issues such as provision of static IP addresses or a means of resolving an address using something like WINS are at issue. I just don't know what was or what was not done; I've used PCAnywhere successfully where I've known how to connect to the proper IP address or NetBIOS name.

>TIA,
>
>PF
>
>>>One of my clients with a VFP app on a network in their office wants to ba able to dial into the network from a laptop at a remote location. Obviously there will be speed implications and I need to know what if anything can be done to reduce them to a minumum.
>>>
>>>i.e. should the exe file be on the laptop and access the system files on the network server without downloading the exe file from the server?
>>>
>>
>>If it's an issue of a single user accessing the system intermittently from outside, a remote access package such as PCAnywhere will undoubtedly perform nearly infinitely better than attempting to run the application locally using a dial-in line to provide RAS access to the data at the remote site. PCAnywhere involves local execution of the application at the client site, with the connection between the remote laptop and the client site passing little more than keystrokes and screen updates - running using RAS access will entail passing data accessed across the dial-up connection, which even at 56Kbps, will be several orders of magnitude slower than data accessed across 10Mbps Ethernet. With perfect clarity of the phone line to achieve the best possible supported data rate and limited compressibility of the data, it would take on the order of 570-600 seconds, or roughly 10 minutes, to pass 4MB of data over the wire. Dial-in using traditional modems is assymetrical, using V.34 modem
>>protocol outbound from a standard modem, and requires a specialized modem with a digial connection at the server end to actually use a 56K data rate protocol such as V.90, K-flex or X2 outbound from the server end; normal modem-to-modem connections without the use of specialized server-end modems would result in a V.34 protocol connection bidirectionally, with a 33.6Kbps maximum data rate, taking nearly twice as long to pass a similar volume of data. It will require far less time to run the application locally on the client site, accessing the data across the LAN and then passing screen update information and keystroke information across the dial-up connection.
>>
>>Even with a consistent, persistent remote connection, it will probably cost far more to redesign the application to use a client-server data model, implement a dedicated database server so that data for queries did not have to pass over the wire in detail and add the necessary hardware to properly set up full-time RAS either by dialup or VPN, to work with remote execution of the application, than to add a low-end box to the LAN to handle the dial-in requirement and run PCAnywhere. 33.6Kbps dialup access via packages such as PCAnywhere, while not nearly optimal, are capable of at least acceptable performance, do not require significant changes to be made to your application, and don't really insist on the use of a database backend to minimize data traffic for servicing queries. If the infrastructure for access via VPN to your environment already exists, PCAnyWhere version 9.0 is capable of making a VPN connection across the internet assuming that your proxy server will pass the
>>required traffic.