WAN acceleration - vs - VPN

[cliff collins]

For working in Revit with remote office locations, can anyone offer realworld experience on which way works best:

WAN acceleration - vs - VPN

Anyone who has actually done it one, or both ways please chime in.

cheers........................

edit: Looks like VPN is really just controlling mouse-clicks from remote connection, which is obviously not the best solution for multi-users in remote
offices trying to "synchronize" local edits to the Central file. So--let's make the thread's subject " How to use a WAN accelerator for working with Revit files from remote offices".

[BMcCallum]

WAN accelerators and VPNs are not mutually exclusive: many WAN accelerators require a VPN to work properly.

[cliff collins]

Please expound upon this.

cheers.......

[TroyGates]

Have tried WAN acceleration at 3 different companies using 3 different products and have not had any success in greatly increasing the speed of remote Save-to-Centrals.

[david.patera186614]

We have had success with the use of a VPN and Riverbed's Steel Head. Not just like you are in the office but much much better than VPN alone.

[Scott Womack]

We have had success with the use of a VPN and Riverbed's Steel Head. Not just like you are in the office but much much better than VPN alone.

There is another major piece of this puzzle. Yes, you have to VPN into a remote server for Steelhead (WA accelerator) to work. However, band width, and equipment on the other end makes as much, or more of a difference in how fast the "link" is. IF you are lucky enough to have a situation where you are Steelhead hardware to Steelhead hardware, then Bandwidth becomes the deciding factor. I recently worked on a LARGE project, where both offices had a T4 line to their internet servers, and it was working practically as if we were in the same office.

Steelhead has a hardware on at least one end. There is a software opposite end, but this is slower. Bandwidth still makes a serious impact on this connection as well.

[patricks]

I have both a VPN connection to my office server and a remote desktop connection to my office workstation set up on my home machine. The remote desktop connection requires the VPN connection to be active in order for it to work.

VPN connection just makes our server Z drive show up on my home machine just like it does at work. I can copy files back and forth, and I generally will just open a Central file across the VPN connection and make a local version on my home machine. This works fine if I'm the only one in the file, because I'll just check out everything and then I'm just working on the local copy. No lags whatsoever.

Now if I'm at home and someone else will be working on a project the same time as me, I'll activate the remote desktop. That way I'm just running the copy of Revit on my work machine, and only mouse movements and keystrokes are transferred across the VPN connection. STC times are much faster since it's just the same as being at my office machine, but graphics can get extremely laggy. When zooming especially, the screen might take 1/2 second to refresh each step. It can get annoying.

I prefer a local file over VPN if I'm the only one in the file, but will use remote desktop if someone else is also working in the file, or if I need to access something like my work e-mail or our time sheet software while at home.

[truevis]

I've used Remote Desktop and Revit 2009 on several big projects and it's been almost as good as being on a local machine in the main office. Somerville, Massachusetts to Baltimore or DC. 20 Mbps RCN cable Internet on my end and something very fast on the office end.

[dlampley.41310]

We have a couple of Riverbed Steelhead 550's coming next week for a 30 day trial. We're going to place one in our Home office and another in one of our remote offices about 60 miles away. We'll be running Revit Stucture 2010 in both offices to see how it works. If I can rememer, I'll post some results later. But, even if it's great, convincing management to purchase them might be a challenge. They're pretty pricy little boxes.

[Steve_Stafford]

We have a couple of Riverbed Steelhead 550's coming next week for a 30 day trial. We're going to place one in our Home office and another in one of our remote offices about 60 miles away. We'll be running Revit Stucture 2010 in both offices to see how it works. If I can rememer, I'll post some results later. But, even if it's great, convincing management to purchase them might be a challenge. They're pretty pricy little boxes.Not as expensive as a just a few short years ago. I remember the first time I saw them in action back in 2006. I was shocked that a Save to Central took no longer than doing it in the same office and the test offices were in Georgia and Nebraska.

If you don't notice improvement then some configuration will be required and it may take one sequence of Saving to get the files "warmed up". I'm a bit out of touch with them lately so I'm not aware of changes that may have been made in the last year or so.

[jsteinhauer]

We did both on a project between three of our offices. I think it was easier to VPN into a local workstation then to use WAN acceleration. Saving to central was an issue. I'll foreword this to the IT Department and have one of them post on this topic.

Jeff S.

[Steve_Stafford]

Cliff,

VPN is essentially a secure "tunnel" connection to your WAN from some remote location using the internet as the connection. Most VPN software blocks out internet access while connected as a means to protect the WAN from "you" and your rogue connection. It is no different than connecting to the office by plugging into the network jack in the wall while at the office except that you are connecting via the internet instead.

While connected via VPN (Virtual Private Network) you can access all the same resources your user identity is allowed to see while in the office. You can copy a central file and make a local and save to central but most likely you'll find that the latency is too great to make it practical.

Remote Desktop doesn't require a VPN, just internet and this is transmitting screen, keyboard and mouse data only. The work is done on a PC that is setup to allow your remote desktop session to run in the office, a workstation at the office left running so you can access it. Cheaper for a couple users than WAN acceleration but starts getting expensive the more users you are supporting this way.

WAN accelerators are attempting to improve the poor conditions we face transmitting data over the internet. They are affected by your connection/ISP and the hops required but the hardware/software of the accelerators work at the packet level to manage change and maximize getting the data there and minimizing how much data is necessary to transfer.

Hope this helps?