Home Forums Best solution for connecting two offices needed

Hi,

We have two offices running AC. The main office has Server 2003 with many workstations on the network but only 6-7 running AC locally and using the server for the database. The satellite office has three computers in the local network and no server -- two hard wired and one laptop.

We would like to use one database for both offices, preferably on the Server 2003 at the main office.

People have discussed LogMeIn as well as just using RemoteDesktop Application that comes with Vista and XP Pro.

Several questions:
[1] Any reason to buy LogMeIn vs using Remote Desktop? Advantages and disadvantages of both?

[2] At the satellite office do we run AC locally and remote in to database on server? Is this possible or practical OR do we login to server, then open AC on server and login on server copy of AC?

[3]Can multiple people run AC on server (obviously under different user logins)?

[4] If we are remoting into main office Server 2003 do we all remote in separately from all three satellite computers as above?

[5] With internet speed of 256 up and down at both sites is this possible or practical?

[6] I am worried about scanning in documents, labs, consults letters, etc. at the satellite site. Will this work or will speed limitations make the entire system or our office efficiency come to a screaming halt or crawl?

ANY and all suggestions on how to pull this off greatly appreciated. If my needs are exceeding practical limitations of AC please advise and ANY good recommendations greatly appreciated. We were planning on linking the two offices sometime this summer.

Best,

J P Clayton, M.D.
US Virgin Islands

I am anxious to see what the experts will offer on this subject. We have a connection that is currently only slightly faster than yours and we use remote desktop to log in from home. It is pretty slow, but it does work.

Welcome to the forum, maybe the next users conference should be at your place? (:-)

Actually if you search back, you will find a lot of information about this. I had recently discussed combining databases, which evolved into a remote office discussion.
We use 2 separate databases for our offices, but they are equally busy.
You could do remote desktop or logmein and work from the other office. I have used logmein and it is slightly slower than being at the actual computer. It is similar to remote desktop.

Because we are equally busy and because internet access is sometimes down, we have chosen to have 2 separate databases.

I would set up logmein to access a nonserver computer. The free version is adequate except for printing. If you want to do Rxes then you will need a pro version.

I often remote chart by logmein for patients seen in the "other" office, which ever that may be. It works, slight speed penalty.

I will try to answer your questions one by one, then give a little guidance as the your best choices.

1. LogMeIn is a touch more secure. It uses a web portal with SSL and uses certificates for each machine. It can at times, connect both computers directly. Unless you get the more expensive version, you cannot use LogMeIn ignition which gets you in a second. But, if you are always connected, it doesn't matter. LogMeIn Pro allows easy transfer of files although for your purpose, not really necessary. Remote desktop is rather secure using its own intrinsic Terminal Services. It's very quick connecting, but if you connect from another computer, your IP address tends to stay in that person's Remote Desktop window, giving them half the battle right there. Now, they need your password only.

Advantage so far: LogMeIn. But, the key:

LogMeIn can only be used for one connection at a time. Computer A from remote office to server. Other computers are out of luck. With RDP, multiple connections to server.

Advantage RDP.

Overall, in your scenario, RDP way ahead.

2. Yes, you would log in to the server and run AC on the satellite. To run it from the server, would be rather slow. I don't know why, but I tried it locally, and it was very slow.

3. See above. RDP yes. LogMeIn no.

4. This is the heart and soul of your question. Yes, you would all remote separately using RDP into terminal services of server. However, another better option is a connection that doesn't use that public Internet with a direct frame relay (expensive and going out of style) or a T1 DIRECTLY to each office. ISP would need to provide. Another great option would be VPN to VPN but using IPSEC tunnel. This would be via hardware at each end (hardware that is capable of VPN like a Cisco version), no a software VPN solution. And, certainly not LinkSys or Netgear.

5. Practical? Doable, but rather slow. I would think at least 1.5 Mbs which is T1 speed. With most business class cable, you should get at least 10 Mbs down and 4 Mbs up. DSL can also be fast but usually lags behind.

6. It could depending on setup. I would recommend having a courier run them over each morning or evening and scan them into the server from the host office.

You have to be sure your solution involves seeing a "picture" of the host and not the host sending information back to the remote.

OK, here is my recommendation if you are really interested. This is what I would do myself and what I would strongly RECOMMEND others do. First of all, this is not remoting into your office from home on GoToMyPC or LogMeIn or even RDP to check a file or look at AC momentarily. This is a full time connection between two offices. This is practically monumental. I wouldn't do it by myself with all the variables of your ISP and different solutions using VPN, terminal services, etc.

1. If you are going to do this, CITRIX is the way to go, again, IMHO. Will give your the terminal connection you need to VPN securely and quickly using host resources.

2. Please consider hiring an IT to help you set this up. Spend that $1,000 to do it right. Maybe even more. Using LogMeIn as a long term solution is just not the right way to go. Make sure you get a good one. Hopefully certified in the key areas, network analysis and design, Microsoft Valuable Professional, etc.

Then, set it up, and come back and share your experiences. Get a free quote on an IT person.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for that very well written post Bert.

Understanding IT and networking at an intermediate to advanced level and having experimented with all of the "cheap and easy" methods to remote into my server, I would agree w/ Bert that Citrix is what you are looking for.

RDP and LogMeIn are fine if you are doing office work from home and there is not a demand for high speed and reliable connections. However, Citrix will give you this capability you are seeking.

Speed and reliability come w/ a price tag however. Expect to pay a bit for Citrix.

We spent months of efforts to figure this out. Finally we installed VPN between the two offices and a remote desktop connection on the server. Yes you need separate remote desk top connection for each person, but is virtual, compare with logme in you would need a separate PC for each connection. The bandwidth is somewhat of an issue. Mainly the upload speed of your main office with server. We have 1MB upload and has lag specially when viewing PDF. Also AC transfers tons of data even if you are just opening a chart, I suppose that is how they wrote it on Access and we are hoping SQL version fix this major issue. We also do lots of scanning, and have people working in developing countries doing our attachments, using same remote desk top.

Don't hesitate to write to me directly if I can help at stoloui@cox.net

Shawn

there is much anticipated hope that SQL will make for faster communication speeds to the database, both for inside networks and VPN networks.

Shawn,

Thanks for that post. Sounds like you have it down fairly well. I agree with your RDP advantages over LogMeIn. It sounds like you have a network which extends far beyond the U.S. border. I would be interested to hear more of the attachment manufacturing and how that relates to your daily AC stuff.

Not sure if you have ever tried using www.experts-exchange.com. My guess is they could have reduced that many months to many weeks, although you may have been working with some networking IT people.

You have three viable options to consider:
1st
Established a VPN connection between the two offices with a VPN appliance. Then obtain the fastest connection between the two offices. The VPN between the offices will appear as one network. This is the easiest and safest solution to deploy.

2nd
RDP (LogMeIn, GoToMyPC) as described above but do not log into the main server with the domain controller (user account management). You should be able to RDP into a Windows XP Pro client computer or establish another Win 2003 server. RDP into the main server is not a best practice and places the server at risk for compromise.

3rd
Citrix or terminal services set up to publish the AC client software onto your client computers in the network. You still need to establish a VPN connection. You could publish the application across your network and maintain consistency of the applications for all users. You would only need to upgrade the server side client AC to distribute the changes across all the users. This is an elegant but expensive solution for just a relative handful of computers. However you could deploy and publish many other applications this way to.

Make sure to get an IT professional to make sure the set up is correct. You do not want you server compromised in the process. You will not save any money if you screw up.

Good luck, let us know your final decision.

There is a disk connection option in Logmein Pro. I haven't played with this option to see how it would work. I have been using Logmein daily with AC at my office. Sometimes I even do my progress notes at the hospital on AC. Freaks everyone out. In any case, it has only been slow a few times - always when the whole hospital network is slow. RDP is probably the easiest way to go. However, it may be just as well to have several dedicated cheap computers in the main office devoted to several Logmein users at the satellite (you can only connect one use to one computer with logmein). The bandwidth for a logmein type connection is not huge. The screens just aren't as pretty.

When I VPN in to the office from home AC can not find the database so I have to use remote desktop which can be very slow.
Any thoughts?

However what is your particular set up to establish your vpn into the network. Are you using a peer to peer or client server model?

Also when you VPN into the office do you actually see the folder that the AC is installed on?

Geoff

Client server
Yes I can see the folder.
I started AC 40 minuets ago as a test and its sill not loaded


Correction 45 minuets and it loaded and found data base
but slow
I have 2.7 down 750 up at the office and 1.5 at the house

false alarm it still wont load a chart

Are you sure that you have the proper account access into the folder? Try opening the "LastNoteBackUp.txt" file.

Are you loading the AC program remotely from the computer or whether you are loading the AC program locally on the computer?

Geoff

I am the admin so i think i have account access
last note opens right up

You probably have the proper permissions for the folder. There is a provision in the user account groups allowing for a remote access group policy. I am not sure if that plays into problem but if you opened in the file in the folder than that is not a problem.

For one thing are you using the same account to access the AC that you use at work or are you using the Admin account?

Is your remote access from home and if so are you using a regular home account or a business type account?

One thing that my brother in law informed me of in Utah were ISPs that would throttle down (slow down the speed) of a VPN connection into for remote office unless you ponied up an additional fee. I am not sure if that is your problem or not but it may helpful to look into that. One easy way to find out if the same problem exists when remote accessing the server from a "business line" like another office or hospital and see if the problem still exists.

Beau,

If you are using VPN without terminal services, you would have issues. RDP or RDC is, by far, the fastest remote connection available.

On your RDP desktop connection window on your computer, go to options -> experience tab and make sure you correct speed is selected and everything is unchecked. Some people use very large bitmaps as their desktop wallpaper which can cause very slow connections.

It almost sounds like your connection is not controlling the desktop remotely and only using your mouse clicks and keyboard.

My suggestion would be to try one of the Virtual Network Connections (VNCs) such as RealVNC or UltraVNC. You didn't mention LogMeIn. You can't go wrong with these and LogMeIn is foolproof. Try going to http://www.lan-2-wan.com/3rd.htm and read on each including Remote Admin. Let me know how you make out.

HTH

My main response to the question of the forum was about linking two office networks together. I thought that VPN would be the best which is what we do at my office to connect to the main hospital. However you may need to employ remote desktop or another remote solution for using the AC application since you probably need more bandwidth for application performance then you will get through an internet connection.

I would defer to Bert's solution, this question should probably should have been moved to a different thread. You are getting advice on a different topic than what your particular issue is which is remotely accessing the AC application.

If you are using remote desktop through server 2003 SBS you can log into the server through internet explorer and you can set up the remote access that way. You will need to make sure that your account is part of the remote desktop users group. Alternatively you can set up another computer on the network and install the GoToMyPC and LogMeIn application to access the AC application.

thomego1 is correct.

One way to look at this (and remember VPN is thrown around incorrectly all the time). VPN seems to be like the word BandAid when it comes to thinking about remote connections. With VPN, you are simply using the Internet as a backbone and tunneling through it using two VPN connections. It is simply a connection between two computer systems to make one WAN and you cannot necessarily use the desktop without some type of software program or other service such as terminal services or Citrix.

If you are trying to tie to offices together ALL THE TIME and connect via software such as Citrix, etc. then you want VPN. You do not want to connect intermittently with the other programs we have talked about, i.e. RDP, VNC, GoToMyPC, etc. For instance, our office connects to the hospital with a VPN connection and uses Citrix to see the PowerChart, PAX, etc. It is NOT a two-way street. And, your firewall must meet certain standards. We can NOT and the hospital would never let us LogMeIn or use GoToMyPC or any other connection to access patient data or other PHI.

Please think of the VNCs, RDPs, GTMPCs, LogMeIns, etc. when you are talking about intermittent and temporary connections from a remote computer at home to a host computer. HTHs.