Ugh.

So I went back to the attorney with this solution in place, all ready to set up his VPN. It's then that I was given further information that he hadn't seen to be relevant previously: he plans to do a lot of outsourcing. He currently has someone in the Philippines logging into his server at night (with nearly full access to his freaking server) and entering data into this bankruptcy software.

So sure, it wouldn't be tough to instruct this guy remotely on how to set up his side of the VPN, but we'd have to send him all the software needed too (there are a couple other applications he'd need).

Add to this some other fun issues:

It seems the previous tech guy has done his best to make himself pretty indispensable in the way he's set up this guy's system. First of all, it appears the attorney doesn't have a static IP. I checked his RDP settings that he uses from outside the office, and the address he's using for the server follows this format: "lastnameofattorney.previoustechguyscompany.com"

So I'm assuming that the guy before me set up a way on his web server to get around the dynamic IP issue, but I'm not sure because I haven't spoken with him. This guy set the office up with two logins to the server that they only use through RDP (there's no monitor or input devices attached to it). The previous tech guy has told them that he'll set up five other users on the server for something like $1000.


Okay, so after all that, my next thought was to simply do what JK was getting at: abandon the VPN idea and simply set up some computers that remote users could log into. It would make things a log simpler. We wouldn't have to install the client software on all these people's computers, and we might even save on the additional copies (I believe the client licenses are not free as I'd thought).

The problem with this plan is what I found after thinking of it: this attorney's office has a terrible internet connection. A speed test resulted in about 1700/550Kbps. I think he's using DSL. A VPN would have been terribly slow, let alone 2-3 remote sessions.

So, thoughts?