Re: possible connection choices

Mulugeta Shiferaw wrote:
>     -all offices use dial-up connection (to the head office and
> then...?) to the  internet
nothing wrong with that, provided it is for only occasional use. long
distance Dialup is expensive per-minute though (and a poor way to gain
connection to the internet. it might be worth getting (say) DSL or cable
to the internet, but keeping dialup for low-usage data transfer, or
investigating a leased-line between the sites.

>  -each office to have a leased-line connection to the internet
also possible-  or simply DSL/cable. a lot depends on how much traffic you
expect your remote offices to carry, and how much of it needs to get to
the head office.
There are also security implications - you may not wish your branch
offices to have direct links to the internet, even for VPN use only. If
you contact your ISP they may well offer you a non-internet package deal
which is significantly cheaper than the internet one (we were offered one
in the uk where we were on effectively a private vlan; no direct internet
connection, RFC1918 ips (class C per location) and 512+512 (symmetric)
DSL.

If you decide to go the VPN route, then you can *still* use dialup - as
long as you don't get allocated a Dynamic IP (and under some
circumstances, even if you are) - Just dial your ISP, establish tunnel, do
what needs to be done, and drop the tunnel (and the link)

I won't bother with the diagram - it will either have the "internet cloud"
with branches and head office as leaves, or the "telephone network" cloud
ditto :)