The old argument about personal PC vs. work machine can be blurred these days, especially if you're able to implement NAP. Bandwidth is definitely a concern, as there are still plenty of people running on dial-up. Which brings up a question. If the user is required to work from home, is the company on the hook for paying for the internet pipe?
>>> Gary Whitten <[email protected]> 12/8/2010 4:01 PM >>> I'm not sure of all the reasons involved, but logmein and GotoMyPC are banned by our security group for use in connectivity. We use a VPN solution from company laptops into the network. For other users, a Citrix solution is used. Until a few minutes ago, I was keeping an eye on this thread just on general interest. I've just been asked to provide a comprehensive list of what is needed for people to work at home. While this thread has generally concentrated on the actual solutions involved, which we generally have set up, something I don't think that has come up with is the requirements from the user's end. If it's a company laptop, we can generally control the specs of the machine and the software and policies on it. If it's a home machine going to a terminal server, Citrix farm, etc., it's less so but as a rule, most machines sold in the last several years can handle that, unless the user has turned it into sludge with their computing habits. Still, I think a minimum CPU and RAM requirement may not be a bad idea. Another big variable is bandwidth and connectivity. I think it would be prudent to not support wireless connections for several reasons, primarily that supporting them is rather hellish should something go wrong. In terms of providers, I'm most familiar with cable (Comcast). Do satellite internet providers for the home give enough bandwidth pull this kind of thing off? I believe FiOS is definitely capable of the level of bandwidth needed. Would you require a speed test with one of the sites out there that do that, specifying a destination near your connection point, which wouldn't necessarily be conclusive. What other considerations on this line of thought are there? Gary Whitten -----Original Message----- From: Fergal O'Connell [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 6:25 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Remote access - Allow employees work from home Jim, A user will pretty much RDP into their desktop and therefore have full access to the full development environment - all other core services that are not public lie OWA etc. Another option that is management and I have to consider is using a 3rd party vendor to provide the solution for us - like logmein.com etc Win2008 R2 TS is something else that I have too look into but have very little knowledge or experience in that area. -----Original Message----- From: Jim McAtee [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 08 December 2010 20:08 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Remote access - Allow employees work from home How many of these suggestions are being given in the context of a software development environment? What do the remote developers actually need access to? In many cases it's only to code repositories. Do they need RDP access to their desktops? What about build systems? Can Citrix be used effectively in either case without introducing a billion other headaches? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fergal O'Connell" <[email protected]> To: "NT System Admin Issues" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2010 10:51 AM Subject: RE: Remote access - Allow employees work from home That's the plan - However I just wanted to bounce this off to see what other folks are doing - I might go with the Citrix solution but I will need to get pricing to see what the overall costs are. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. It is intended solely for the addressee. Access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized. 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