Overview

With an increasingly decentralized and mobile workforce, organizations are coming to rely on remote access solutions to provide telecommuters, traveling executives, salespeople, and branch office staff with connectivity to applications and information stored on office PCs or corporate LANs. By the year 2000 every major company is expected to have a remote access capability to support the information needs and productivity requirements of remote professionals. According to various industry estimates, there will be at least 100 million remote professionals by the year 2000, with half of them from the United States.

Traditionally, two major categories of remote access solutions have been available: remote control and remote node. With remote control, a user dials a specific modem-equipped or LAN-attached PC and the remote computer assumes the capabilities of the host with all host screen displays mirrored on the remote PC. Remote node operation looks to the user and to the LAN like a locally attached node; in fact, the remote PC runs regular applications as if it were indeed wired to the LAN. The choice of remote control or remote node depends on the applications that must be supported.

Until recently, remote control was the remote access method of choice. However, with the introduction of powerful and portable notebook computers, affordable high-speed modems and bridge/routers, more advanced compression algorithms, and the implementation of client/server applications, remote node is rapidly gaining in popularity.

This situation has prompted some vendors to offer hybrid solutions that support both remote control and remote node...