Software solutions are cheaper, of course, but attempting to have more than four concurrent users will generally degrade performance, so this tends to be a small firm solution. For larger firms, RAS must be hardware based. Hardware based solutions for RAS start at several thousands of dollars, but scale from four users to hundreds of users. The costs increase as the number of supported concurrent connections increases. This solution provides an encrypted, secure channel between the remote computer and the local network using a public network such as the Internet.
Costs are very reasonable.
The remote computer requires VPN capabilities, which can be included in the operating system or supplemented via additional software. The VPN host can be a software implementation on a generic computer or a specialized device that supports the VPN connections. Many of the network equipment vendors also provide VPN access in their router equipment. Plan to spend several thousand dollars on the VPN host portion. To say that VPNs are the rage today is an understatement.