Overview
Many customers ask how they can access Printcost from a home office, or while on the road. This is not intended to be a definitive guide, but provides an introduction to VPN technologies and how you can implement these for your network or pc.

Remote Access Options
There are two basic families of remote access, and these can be combined. The first is remote desktop technology, with perhaps PCAnywhere being the best known (if not best loved) example of this. Citrix offer GoToMyPc, a web based product and Windows has the built-in Remote Desktop for Windows XP, Vista and Windows Server 2003 or newer. There are various others, some free and/or open source and some retail products.

The second family of remote access technology consists of VPN's. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network creates a private (secure and encrypted) connection between two points, via the internet. Generally speaking, this means between your laptop or home pc and your office network or server. VPN solutions come in various flavours ranging from Cisco routers down to Windows built in 'connect to my workplace'. Which is best for you depends on how many people require remote access and the level of security needed.

VPN Overview
A typical VPN connection will use a router/modem which enables inbound VPN connections at the office end, with remote users creating connections with Windows' built in VPN software. This will usually allow for several VPN user accounts to be created and active at any time - usually between 4 and 8 for a relatively low cost device. These will use either PPTP or LT2P protocols, which are both supported by Windows with no extra setup. You will also need a static IP for your office broadband account; this is a permanent internet address which is assigned to your broadband connection, so that users can always connect to the office VPN device.

Once a VPN is established, your computer has the same connectivity as if you were plugged into the office network, be it cabled or wireless. You will be able to access shared drives, printers and servers that you can access when in the office, though at a lower speed, according to your internet connection (VPN's can be connected over mobile broadband too, wherever in the world you can access the internet). Due to speed limitations, it is generally not practical to run applications like Printcost (which deal in large data volumes) over a VPN connection, instead, these applications are run on a remote machine, which you access remotely - via a Remote Desktop.

Remote Desktop Overview
Generally Remote Desktop access is not permitted over the open internet for security reasons. A VPN connection provides a secure, encrypted connection through which to pass remote desktop data. If you have a desktop pc at the office, then you can make a remote desktop connection to that machine - giving you full access to anything and everything that you can do fro your office computer. This includes email, perhaps network drives, intranet and of course Printcost. The remote desktop application fills your local screen with the image of the remote machine, and your mouse and keyboard actions are transmitted to the remote machine.

If you have a laptop that you use in the office and on the road, then (provided a suitable server such as Windows Server 2003 or Windows Small Business Server 2003) you can connect directly to the server and access Printcost and other applications from the server's desktop. In some offices this is used as the day to day access method, as it makes moving between different desktop PCs trivial. If your server is a Windows XP machine you can still do this, but only one user at a time will be able to connect to the desktop. Servers such as Windows Server 2003 offer a 'Terminal Server' which allows multiple users to have their own remote desktop at the same time.

Where to from here?
Talk to your IT provider about what you would like to achieve with a remote access system. How many users need access, and how often. How critical is security, simplicity/convenience and cost? Your IT provider should be familiar with your existing setup and can consider any near future plans (new servers, PCs etc) in the decision for the best remote access solution.