How to Set Up Your Business Network to Connect From Home

Telecommuting is the ability to work from home. What was once only an option for large corporations, has now become a viable solution for many small to medium-sized businesses. But if you are like many small business owners who have little in the way of IT staff, you may not know where to start. This article provides a broad view of the technology and steps necessary to allow you and your employees to remotely connect to your business network from home.

Things You'll Need

• Internet Connections
• Modem
• Router

Instructions

• 1

  Make sure that you have a good Internet connection for your business. Select broadband, either DSL or cable, since dial-up service is too slow. If you can afford it, go for the best upload and download speeds. It'll cost you more, but will be worth it in the end because you will have large amounts of data coming and going.

   

   

• 2

  If you're familiar with networking you know that on a network each device has a number called an IP address that identifies it. In the case of an Internet connection, the router or modem that connects you to the Internet also has it's own IP address assigned to it from the provider. This address can be dynamic (meaning it may change everytime your location connects to the Internet) or static (the IP address is set and never changes). Because you'll be using this IP address to connect to work from home, it pays to have a static IP address for your business, so you will always know what it is. Basic services usually do not have static IP addresses, but if you get a business class Internet service it will normally include one. Ask your ISP beforehand to be sure. If you don't have a static IP adress at work, you can still work from home by confirming whatever the IP address currently is. The easiest way to do this is by opening a browser on your computer at work and going to whatismyip.com. (Note: the Internet connection at home does not have to have a static IP, only at the business location.)

   

   

• 3

  You will also need to ensure that your business has its own Internet firewall for security. A firewall is a piece of hardware or software that controls what connections get to come in and out of your location. The good news is that most retail routers have a firewall built in. You will have to open up ports in your workplace firewall to accomodate the VPN connection explained below.

   

   

• 4

  VPN (Virtual Private Networking) is the technology that will allow you to actually connect to your workplace. How VPN works is that the business location will have a device that creates a VPN "tunnel" with a software VPN client on your computer at home. The device at your workplace could be a computer server or a standalone piece of hardware. The "tunnel" is encryped using PPTP, L2TP, IPSEC or whatever protocol the device uses. The encryption of the tunnel will protect your data as it flies across the Internet "cloud." Both Microsoft and Mac servers support serving VPN connections right out of the box. Examples of manufacturers of professional hardware VPN devices are: Cisco, Watchguard, SonicWall and Juniper. There are also plenty of inexpensive VPN devices by Linksys, DLink, Netgear and other consumer companies.

   

   

• 5

  While you're at home you will connect to to your workplace using the public IP address of your business and VPN client software running on your home computer. The client software used greatly depends on what the device is at the workplace. In most cases you can create the VPN connection directly from Windows or your Mac with no extra software, but a dedicated piece of VPN hardware such as a Sonicwall has its own proprietary software client that has to be installed on the computer.

   

   

• 6

  Now that you are connected to your workplace you can share data between your home computer and office computers just like they were on the same network. Note, however, that data being sent across the Internet is going to be a lot slower than on a local network. With that in mind, there are some solutions that work better than others for delivering data and applications across VPN and it really just depends on what you are using. One of the most popular solutions for delivering applications is called Terminal Services. With Terminal Services you would have a Microsoft Terminal Services server setup at the business location where the database is. The home user uses a Terminal Services client to connect to the server and each client gets its own "session" on the server. They see a Windows desktop just as if they were working on their own machine--but in reality they are working on the server at the business location across the Internet. The applications run on the server which has local access to the database, so it's much faster than sending the actual data across the Internet. There are other applications that work well in this scenario including: Citrix, Lotus Notes, SQL applications and Unix terminals. Another popular solution would be to just connect to your work PC directly instead of to a server. This would allow you to control the desktop of your work PC just like you were there. Some great applications for that would be VNC or RAdmin.