The type of connectivity required would be:
1. receive an ip address from our company dhcp server
2. log onto our windows nt domain and map the drive shares associated with their profile
3. have full ssh/telnet/ftp access to the various servers that they would have when in the office
4. access the corporate lotus notes email server
5. (optionally) connect to the internet via the corporate proxy server
6. (optionally) print to office printers (i know, they would not be in the office, but we have an app that prints reports from local PC's to a particular printer that is checked regularly by a member of staff)
7. map drives from company servers over samba and nfs
8. vnc/netop access to pc's and servers
9. Allow setup of multiple vpns from various sources, e.g. remote PC's, servers (with various OS's), customers proprietory devices, e.g. Cisco, etc. with control over what each vpn can access on our LAN.
All the above access would need to be over a secure internet connection, with very good authentication of clients coming in.
It would need to have very strong firewall capabilities, as i would envisage this replacing our aging pix firewall device, and become our company firewall.
The gateway device allowing this access would be connected to the internet via ethernet, but also have a modem for backup to dial in.
My Linux preference is Mandrake, and we have some desktop and several servers using it. I would therefore very much like to be able to use MNF for this purpose. I have no experience of MNF yet, and only installed it this week to have a quick look. I also see there is a new version in beta.
My questions are:
1. can MNF (either current, or upcoming new version) do the above well
2. With the new version, will i be able to download the full version, as with the current mnf, so i can install and test it, before purchasing a support contract, etc. I am a Mandrake Club Silver member
3. Where can i get the current MNF pdf documentation, so i can experiment with the current version of MNF? It does not appear to be on the CD i downloaded.
4. When is the new version due for release?
5. Is there any point in downloading the new beta version to try the above. It appears that most of the key components are not yet operational.
Sorry for the very long email, but this appears to be the best place to ask these questions. If i should be asking somewhere else, let me know.
Many thanks. Dj.
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