RE: Connecting satellite locations via the Internet -- MIDRANGE-L

Having been through these exact same areas about a year ago and then
settling on a private network I will tell you some of our reasons.

1       As you mentioned, with VPN you don't get a guaranteed throughput.
This was critical to us since we are in the service business and we may have
an irate customer on the telephone.
2       With big locations with multiple PC's and printers it was going to
require T-1 lines accessing the Internet.  With guaranteed data rates we
were able to install 56kb lines at about 1/3 of the monthly price of T-1 and
still support 20 workstations and 8 printers.  This was a big deal since we
got a 24X7 monitored frame relay network for less money than 2 of the VPN
quotes.
3       Managing the network is a real pill if you are having response time
problems over the Internet.  With our frame relay network, we have abilities
to monitor network traffic and reconfigure on the fly.  Lucent's NetCare
center in Tampa is watching our network even while I am asleep
4       We needed redundancy for our stores.  With the frame network we have
automatic dial backup into our LAN.  The users don't even know it happens.
With VPN we would have to have 2 paths active all of the time or at least an
account with 2 different ISP's with a dial up solution.
5       Security was an issue a year ago.  I think IBM and others have done
a great job of making VPN a viable alternative, in some cases, by removing
the security issue.
6       Control of network structure.  We control the IP addresses, we don't
use public IP addresses.  We don't have to worry about firewalls (except on
the back side of the WAN to provide email and Internet access to our
clients).
7       With our network, we can prioritize traffic.  Telnet has first
priority, SMTP second and HTML last.  This keeps our pipes open for business
traffic and doesn't clutter the bandwidth with people browsing the WWW.
8       There are about 50 more reasons but I am getting tired of typing.


                -----Original Message-----
                From:   Gary Higgs [mailto:ghiggs@julian.uwo.ca]
                Sent:   Wednesday, March 10, 1999 3:13 PM
                To:     'MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com'
                Subject:        Connecting satellite locations via the
Internet


                So, what's the verdict?? Private lines at sometimes
unbelievably high costs 
                (which are declining....slowly) or access to the Internet at
each site 
                reducing on going operational expenses.  
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