Digital Trends

A very popular trend that has been growing since the mid-eighties is telecommuting, using your computer to work from home or any remote location. Now, with greater power than ever in laptops and the newer portable workstations, you can be at work while physically sitting at home. Ideally, it is like having extremely long extension cords on your mouse, monitor and hard drive. Whatever you do at home is reflected on your system at work.

The benefits are not only with the employee, but now the company has a lot to gain by permitting their workers to perform their functions off site. I just became a manager of my own area where I work and gained a new respect for my boss when I found out all the budget items I was now responsible for. Internal charges are made for the cubicles the staff uses, parking, food services, health services, elevators, air conditioning and a plethora of other expenses for every person that works on-site. It is less expensive for the company to let you work from home. Statistically, the remote worker puts in more hours, is available for emergencies at any time and takes less sick days.

Since the goal of telecommuting is to make your connection at home as transparent as possible when online at work, several protocols have become popular to permit this kind of access. There are two main factors that must be balanced; speed and security. When I first started to work from home in 1982 the means to connect was primitive. I had a 2800 baud modem, which I later upgraded to 56kbs and with the then-new Windows 3.0, the screen at home slowly painted whenever I clicked my mouse. Today's software is almost instantaneous with its responsiveness. Back then the method to provide security and connectivity was a peer-client software package. While mostly superseded by direct protocols, Symantec still carries PC-Anywhere in its catalog of software. With this package you are required to have a copy running in host mode at work and the program in client mode to connect. This requires installation of the software on any machine you want to connect to or work from. While this used to be the most popular method of remote computing, many companies are now opting for a more direct approach.

Almost all remote computing solutions provide access to your company's network including workstations or work environments, printers, both remote and local as well as hard disc drives, CD drives and other storage media.

Most networks are internally wired; the company owns all the assets required to provide connectivity. There is a protocol called VPN (Virtual Private Network) that uses the regular Internet to extend the company internet or intranet to allow remote uses to tie-in. VPN affords the same capabilities as private leased lines without the overhead cost by using the existing public infrastructure. Security is provided using the VPN protocol by encrypting each packet of data at the home computer and decrypting it at work. In order to sign on, the user typically has a small device that usually looks like a keychain or a small pocket calculator that creates a random alpha numeric key. This key is typed in by the user and validated before the connection is fully established. Usually the user has to type in a special ID code to seed the random number so someone would have to physically posses your little keychain and know your code to make the connection. VPN is available as a proprietary protocol from a variety of companies and there is even an open source VPN for the more cost conscious company.