Hi Guys:

I have an interesting issue to address in my current upgrade of the
airline reservation system setup at my travel agency. They are forcing
us to pull their dedicated T-1 and PCs, and put in at our expense a DSL
with our own workstations and a VPN to their hosts. Not that big a
deal, however, there is one wrinkle that needs addressing. The old
system has a dedicated DOS-based print server, but the new arrangement
needs to use their latest Windows based print manager software. We want
to use a Win2k PC in our accounting office, since its closest physically
(just one the other side of the wall from where the printers are located
to keep the noise out of the front office) and is only lightly used, so
it won't be dragging down the active terminals when printing (which is
not that heavy a demand to begin with). Their support people say its
okay, but here was their last comment:

"I'd like to comment on one thing. You mentioned that you would be
installing the Focalpoint Print Manager (FPM) software on a machine in
the back office. That's OK, but that machine will require some keyboard
activity in order to maintain the VPN connection. In other words, in
order for FPM to continue to receive messages, the VPN must remain on
and connected. Due to keyboard inactivity, the VPN will drop after a
period of time. If that machine will be used by someone in the office,
that's great. If not, the better thought might be to have FPM loaded on
a machine that gets some activity."

My response is that to start with, when the bookkeeper is not in, we can
have someone just stop in the back office periodically (not clear how
often is needed, something like every twenty minutes or so, maybe) while
they get up to go to get tickets or other stuff, or to set up some sort
of 'keyboard stuffer' utility that we can run on Task Manager to
simulate keyboard activity. Apparently mouse movement emulation is not
enough. We are pretty well locked in to their software and
requirements, so will have to do our own workaround at our end. The
extranet client for VPN is from Nortel, and basically the Apollo host
just sends print jobs as requested from the workstations to a known
address for the print server, but if the VPN times out on the print
server we'll get a stuck queue... This is the reason why we need to
address it. They apparently don't accommodate dedicated print servers.
The only other alternative will be to run cabling (2 serial cables) from
the far back of the office spaces into the front office spaces (at our
expense), which is inconvenient, to put it mildly.

Have you run into a need anything like this before? Any suggestions or
specific utility programs you can recommend that we can use this way?

Any help you can be will be most appreciated.

FYI: The DSL gets installed tomorrow, but the final cut over to the new
print manager setup won't be until Nov. 20. So, we have some time, but
not a lot. Good thing I'm unemployed right now so I can spend some time
on this stuff...

TIA.

Rob