Hi All,

I'm trying to find the best solution to a problem that I have with the business I work for.

Basically there are currently three of us at different locations in the Waikato and whom are using ADSL connections to access the internet for email etc.

What we want is VPN access to a single server that we can all then use for a number of tasks. Promarily this box will be a file server and host for a SQQL Database (or 2). We only require remote acces to the Server OS for configuration and setup - after that it will be an infrequent need.

We will then each use a VPN connection through our existing DSL to acess the server as though it was local to our home networks.

I dont think there is anything difficult about this really, however we dont want to spent a zillion dollars a month for this privilige.

What I see as the options are:-

1. Buy a server, and any network and connection hardware we need, upgrade one of our home offices to have a faster internet connection (upload speed being critical here) and away we go.
OR
2. Buy/subscribe to a dedicated hosting service that already has the internet bandwidth to support VPN connections from the 3 (for now) of us, install the software setup etc and then let someone else worry about it.

The problem with option 1 is that we are struggling to find a internet provider that can give us either
a) a Faster overall connection (fibre/wireless - whatever - anything but ADSL).
b) The main reason for that is that none of us live close to town - were all on the fringes.

Option 2 seems attractive but having done some browsing it looks like it wont be a cheap oiption - the best I've found so far is $299.95/ month and this may not even be appropriate as they dont explicitly talk about Windows based OS's being an option.
These services seem to be geared towards Web server hosting which is not what we want to do.

Now - I'm a softweare developer and havent really had much to do with networks and internat connectivity in the past few years - have I missed an option maybe?

Does anyone know if Symettric DSL is available in NZ? IT seems like it would probably solve our problem - but the only people talking about it are the government.

Thanks in advance for any insight you can lend me.

Brendon