A VPN router just off-loads the encryption calculations from your workstation (which will probably only increase speed if your CPU was over-taxed to begin with). The Steelhead is a "cache" of your network server(s). The difference between it & creating a full server that's sync'd with the main one is that it's dynamic, so it doesn't need to have the same (full) capacity. There's also a competing VPN acceleration (software-only) product available from Availl/GlobalSCAPE - WAFS (which actually duplicates/synchronizes the entire server and saves previous versions, instead of "caching"), but don't ask me about either product - we don't have any other offices, and it's just too expensive for individual users working from home part-time (though it looks like Riverbed has a "Mobile" version now, which I'll be checking out). With your two full-time users, it might make sense (also taking into account the decreased management).
Looking at it again now, WAFS seems very similar to SureSync's functionality (which we have), though we haven't started using the File Locking option.



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