Need to connect 2 private Lans for sharing files while maintining security

How often are you transferring it? During the day? If its only once and the file time is flexible, I'd say internet vpn is the way to go. Else you can run a ethernet across the two and create a middle network and turn up basic routing. You may want to use statics so you only allow traffic to/from certain addresses, and/or use ACLs to prevent all other traffic other than the copy itself.

If its in the same office building, could always do a daily thumb drive drop-off...:-)

Oh and the reason I say internet is fine if its once or twice a day and flexible, is you can kickoff the transfer job during the evening, and with a decent 4-500 k cable connection, should only take 6-10 minutes.

Although I'm guessing one side or the other has slow uplink speeds as most ISPs do, so unless you have a private T1 or something, this may rule out the internet option all together.

This sounds better if your copied this to a 6GB flash drive and just ran it down the hallway. That's my network based opinion.

Yes, you can run a LAN speed cable from your firewall/router/whatever down the hall to the other office's firewall/router/whatever. If they are close enough, consider wireless instead. In office buildings, cabling is run up in the ceiling tile. If this is a long term solution, consider running a real wall jack on both ends of the cable run.

Let us assume the following (because we do not know your equipment): Your office network is a 192.168.1.0 /24 network (192.168.1.0 -

192.168.0.255) Their office network is a 172.16.0.0 /24 network (172.16.1.0 - 172.16.1.255) Both offices have a managable router (Cisco) with a spare ethernet port. Your desktop computer IP address is 192.168.1.25. Their desktop computer IP address is 172.16.1.25.

Connect the two ethernet ports with a crossover cable. If you do not have a crossover ethernet cable or do not know what this is, put a cheap little pocket sized ethernet hub/switch between the two company routers.

On your network router (assuming the port to the other company is FastEthernet 0/1), configure the following: interface FastEthernet 0/1 description *** Ethernet to other office *** ip address 10.11.12.13 255.255.255.252 ip access-group 123 in no shutdown ! ip route 172.16.1.0 255.255.255.0 FastEthernet0/1 10.11.12.14 ! access-list 123 permit ip host 192.168.1.25 host 172.16.1.25

On their network router (assuming the port to the other company is FastEthernet 0/1), configure the following: interface FastEthernet 0/1 description *** Ethernet to other office *** ip address 10.11.12.14 255.255.255.252 ip access-group 123 in no shutdown ! ip route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 FastEthernet0/1 10.11.12.13 ! access-list 123 permit ip host 172.16.1.25 host 192.168.1.25

There is a better, more complete way to do this with policy based routing and NAT but I am leaving this answer for now to keep this simple.

Thanks for responding. The file will be transferred several times per day and maybe more than that. I'd really like a solution that automates the process rather than carrying over a hard drive or some other media. I would image a router or firewall could do this but I'm not sure.

Thanks for the info Scott. I replied a few days ago but it doesn't look as though it went through. We have linksys and netgear routers but I've worked with Cisco products and thought this would be a good source of information. We have a $1,200 budget. I'm wondering if I could connect a Cisco firewall or router between the two networks without replacing existing devices. I could give the E0 an address on network A and E1 an address on network B and place the server behind E1 I would create rules to control traffic and add static routes to Windows XP on the workstations that will be used to transfer data. I was also considering a dual homed server with nic A on one network and nic B on the other. I'm probably completely wrong my plan but I hope it will help to communicate what I want to do.

thanks