The remote control method of remote access is simple, inexpensive, and does all that many attorneys need. However, it does have limitations. For example, if you have three attorneys in the firm, and they all need to dial in concurrently from home, the office will need three host machines equipped with modems and the remote control software. Once you leave the world of remote control, you will need to put a crowbar in the firm's wallet, because prices escalate sharply. Windows NT has this type of support embedded in the operating system.
Novell servers require supplemental software that costs hundreds of dollars.
The cost to implement this solution varies based on the number of modems and the operating system that is used for the RAS server. Although using an existing file server would save hardware costs, it restricts the number of concurrent connections that can be supported. It is not recommended to use a software based RAS solution for more than four concurrent users. 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.