Re: VPN questions -- PCTECH

Do you want an option where your AS400 session doesn't drop very often (and you lose your work), or an option where your AS/400 session almost never drops (and, therefore, you don't lose your work)? PC5250 over the Internet, whether through a VPN tunnel or bare naked (don't do that, please), is riskier than PC5250 on your machine locally connected. If the VPN tunnel goes down or your ISP has problems or whatever, your session on your machine at work is still going - it is completely unaffected by the vagaries of the Internet. That's why we chose the option of using Remote Desktop through VPN - it just does not cause us to lose anything.

I happen to use the SSH Sentinel client that used to be available - it now might be available with a VPN appliance, don't know. It is very easy to configure - much more so than the IPSEC configuration in Win2K/XP, which is excruciatingly painful.

VNC would be a good option for those whose host at work is not XP Pro. I have made no comparison of reliability between VNC and Remote Desktop.

Vern

At 09:06 PM 8/4/2004, you wrote:

There is also VNC  http://www.realvnc.com/ for remote access.
Unless your TCP/IP session (not the AS400 session) is timing out I would not expect an AS400 session to drop very often. There are settings on the AS400 you can set to try to keep the TCP/IP session active http://www.midrangeserver.com/tfh/tfh100702-story05.html

MochaSoft TN5250 also has a keep alive setting, and has less overhead the iSeries Access.
John Ross
Vern Hamberg wrote:
To add to the mix -- if you run iSeries Access through a VPN, you are at the mercy of your Internet connection. It is very likely you will lose the connection to your interactive session. This is why we use Remote Desktop - it is like PC/anyWhere. If your work machine is an XP Pro box, you can leave it running, after you have set it up to allow remote users. From home, once your VPN is connected, you can run a Remote Desktop client (available for all flavors of Windows - well, not 3.1 for you Luddites out there - rejoice!) that you point at your work machine. If the connection goes down, as it might, then your work machine is still running with the emulation - all you need to do is reconnect the VPN & the RD client again - cha-ching! There may be reasons why your network security folks won't allow this - see if there is some way they will, because it is TRES cool not to have iSeries Access fall down all the time. Besides, it is very slow over the 'Net. And you don't need to install iSeries Access at all.
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