INVESTIGATION AND RESULT

When I analyzed the problem I saw two problems instead of one! First being convergence of various services and platforms and second being remote availability. However these are two separate problems but they can actually be addressed by just one solution. Virtual Private Networking!

Virtual Private Networking offers scalability, remote availability and eventually offers convergence as well. How does VPN offer convergence? You might ask? Well let's take Sun Infosys Ltd's Scenario. They have CCTV systems which are currently offline systems, PC hardware assembling and sales. By leveraging VPN the offline CCTV systems can be linked to the internet and intranet eventually and effectively making the CCTV systems ONLINE system, the PC assembling department has to go through various procedures such as hardware procurement, supplier chain management, stock, sales, dispatch, returns, technical support and marketing. All these aspects can be brought together via a single either online system or networked system in both cases VPN again is the answer bridging the gap.

In my view the possible methods to achieve the objective would be:

•  Virtual Private Networking using hardware based tools and technologies.
•  Virtual Private Networking using software based tools and technologies.
•  Protocol Selection
•  Performance needs
•  IP Address Planning
•  ISP Evaluation
•  Installing and configuring ISA Server 2000 and on Windows Server 2003 for Remote VPN

•  Hardware Based Solutions:
For hardware based solutions, various tools and devices are available by a number of vendors; these include Cisco as the foremost mentioned, Sonicwall, Shiva etc. The list is endless. These are VPN enabled / pass through routers, VPN Concentrators, VPN Optimized Routers and VPN Firewalls etc.

•  Software Based Solutions:
For software based solutions there are numerous products in the market each catering to all the needs of any kind of scenario. The good side about software based solutions is that they are very much customizable and upgradeable, scaleable. The bad point is that they are prone to fallouts, attacks, viruses, and performance issues.

Software based solutions are best offered by the software giant Microsoft, Then Symantec, Check point software, Cisco and many others.

•  Protocol Selection
When talking about protocol selection for a VPN implementation I have to take into account Sun InfoSys Ltd's existing infrastructure, scale of the company, the costs and budget.

Keeping in view of the above factors Sun InfoSys is a small to medium sized organization and in my view the best protocol to go for would be IPSec, with IPSec to IPSec implementation, given its various qualities which is discussed and researched further in the proposal.

When talking about software based solutions a point to note is that they are all platform dependent. Hence they can incur overhead costs and expensive expertise to pay for installation and or management. I chose ISA Server 2000 for this implementation. I decided to show the work done and with the help of figures to better understand each step that I took. The next steps were:
•  Performance needs of the remote applications
•  IP Address Planning
•  ISP Evaluation
•  Installing and configuring ISA Server 2000 and on Windows Server 2003 for Remote VPN

•  Performance needs:
The applications that are being used in Sun InfoSys Ltd. are SAGE, MSOffice, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Remote Desktop, and IP camera's and DVR's propriety softwares. The most resource hungry applications are SAGE and the IP Cameras and DVR's remote viewing softwares.

My analysis after actual testing is that these applications are not incredibly resource hungry yet are not on the basic level as well, in other words they are nor enterprise class application on the other hand they are not basic or home applications, they are medium level moderate application which requite a fairly consistent performance if not super fast performance.

Because of the nature of the Camera and DVR software, they need to have the highest frames per second and need no frames to be dropped, the reason being if any frame is dropped and a burglary is occurring in that given time and frame then the evidence could become lost. Therefore I decided that I should choose a solution that should provide me consistency and little amount of errors while also delivering adequate speed levels and performance.

•  IP Address Planning:
Sun InfoSys Ltd. does not need a huge amount of IP addresses to be purchased from an ISP because the whole network only need to be available for certain individuals and they can log on the internet.

In my investigation I found out that they need 5 static IP addresses which should be purchased by their ISP. One for the remote connection capability, one for backup purposes, another for network allotment and rest two for future requirements like windows media server as they are planning to do web casting for some of their customers.

•  ISP Evaluation:
Sun InfoSys Ltd. already is on a business plan with an Internet Service Provider called Eclipse Internet. The service provider is excellent and already providing all the necessary broadband needs and bandwidth, the requested 5 static IP address were readily provided by them. I did not find any need to move on to another ISP and this ISP is excellent.

•  Installing and configuring ISA Server 2000 and on Windows Server 2003 for Remote VPN:
I installed and configured (partitioning the hard drive, formatting the hard drive etc) a Windows Server 2003 for the purpose of VPN. See Appendix A. for the detailed procedures.

After this step I followed the excellent articles and help available in abundance by Microsoft and on the internet on how to install and configure VPN on Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

I installed ISA Server 2000 because it was cheap, offered everything that this project required and fairly easy to deploy. See Appendix B, C, D, E and F.

The articles can be found at:
[ http://www.microsoft.com/ ]
[ http://www.microsoft.com/isaserver/default.mspx ]