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My company is looking for a solution where two branches can be connected securely. The goal is to have the two branches establish a vpn conection (at the router levels) so anything connected beyond the routers will already use that encrypted channel for data transfer.

Another requirement is that users of either branch can connect to their branch using a vpn software client on their laptops to either of the branches.

So the question is... What router should I use for this? Cisco 800 or above? Can it match the specified requirements? I am not too concerned with Voice, WiFi or all that other jazz. All I care about is the connectivity b/n the two branches to be encrypted and the speed to be reasonably high over long distance (I know, impossible but at least I want to avoid lag due to vpn processing at the routers)...

Edit:

I forgot to mention the state of the network. There are about 40 users total, some 20 to 30 vms running on both branches. Each branch has connectivity with the outside world through cable. One branch has 20 down, 10 up while the other has 14 down 5 up (in mbps). Expected frequent access to source ctrl, however the files checked in and out are relatively small. The only thing that may also be needed is for clients to log in to any of the vm's in the main branch. Users commonly copy vm's from one branch to another.

Any recommendations will be greatly appreciated!

Caleb
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bleepzter
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  • Please tell us how much traffic you are expecting to have? What is your connection (DSL, Cable, T1, etc)? – xeon May 02 '11 at 21:15

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As Xeon mentioned, it's hard to suggest something without knowing how many users, how much traffic and what your pipe speed is..

That said, the CISCO ASA 5505 works great for small office site-to-site and remote connection VPNs. It's VPN throughput of "up to" 100 Mpbs should be more than sufficient for most offices. My only complaint is the standard two user SSL VPN license, however, now that they've released an x64 version of their IPSEC client it's less of an issue.

I think it's a great piece of hardware at a reasonable price.

Jerret
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