Sign up for the Net. Worker newsletter and get all the columns sent to your inbox each week. Because Win 2000 software includes VPN support, customers don't have to buy separate VPN software for each PC or spend time distributing it, says Thaddeus Fortenberry, author of Windows 2000 Virtual Private Networking . When you have thousands of remote clients, distributing and maintaining software is a nightmare and a huge expense.
Cost savings is what drives many companies to choose remote-access VPNs in the first place.
Rather than pay long-distance phone bills to take calls from remote PCs, these remote access VPNs use the Internet. Remote users can connect to a Win 2000 server or to VPN servers from companies such as Cisco and Nortel Networks. This Win 2000 compatibility makes it possible to set up VPN connections among business partners that don't have VPN gear made by the same vendors. However, companies that require thousands of remote connections may want to consider using a single-purpose VPN server rather than a Win 2000 server, Fortenberry says. In his work as the VPN program manager for Compaq's internal VPN, he says he limits the number of simultaneous VPN connections to 2,000 because of having to reallocate IP address space, but the practical limitation of the servers is between 4,000 and 5,000.