Connecting Via Wireless & VPN to a mobile computer

We don't want to go through the hotels LAN or phone system, apparently (I'm told from past experiments) it is very difficult to get the hotel to play ball with their firewalls or being able to dial out easily. We could rent a phone line and connect it into each PC but thats messy. If we can use GPRS then the PCs can be moved around the hotel reception.

Also with GPRS you pay per packet sent not per second online so the PC can stay on-line all the time if we want.

I (think I) know how you go about connecting from a mobile computer into a LAN, but how do you connect from the LAN into the mobile PC? Do you set a port that the mobile listens to?

Yes

Dialup? I don't see why you're aiming towards GPRS? Surely these hotels can get broadband so why not use that? Or ISDN. GPRS is pretty slow unless you start multilinking.

David.

Yep

Also true but slow.

Probably, i've never bothered doing it with a phone but most of them support the Hayes command set so I'd expect them to just listen out accordingly. Why not look at a GPRS modem instead of a phone? Something like this?

Or install a phone line in a cupboard with an access point and just use wireless to the device you want to manage. That's going to be easier I would have thought and more versatile.

David.

I like the idea of the phone line in a cupboard but it depends on what the hotel lets us do.

Thanks for the help.

Kevin

If you can present the business case, it shouldn't be hard to convince them, especially if you pay the install/rental.

David.