Introduction

One of the key differences between today's work environment and the same environment a decade ago is the need for access. A decade ago you might have gone on a trip and, unless your pager went off, you weren't likely to haul out your portable computer to check your mail. Today, email, corporate intranets, customer resource management applications, and a variety of other network-based resources need to be available to employees from virtually anywhere. The days when your users reported to work every morning at one of the corporate offices are rapidly becoming a thing of the pastusers are no longer tied to corporate networks. In fact, at some companies, more employees work in home offices and connect to the corporate network by using the Internet and remote access technologies than sit in corporate offices connected to a LAN. This has resulted in the blurring of the lines of what is considered the corporate network and what your duties are as a Windows Server 2003 network administrator. In fact, it could be your responsibility to implement and support the technology to provide employees secure local and remote access to their resources.

The good news is that the technology has come a long way in a decade, and the Microsoft Windows Server operating system capabilities have improved as well. In 1993, you probably connected to a network by dialing in using a 14,400bps modem, connecting to either a stand-alone modem or a modem bank on the other end. Not only have connection speeds increased dramatically since then, but with the adoption of high-speed Internet connections in many venues, there are now a multitude of options for connecting to a remote network. Windows Server 2003 supports a wide variety of solutions for providing this connectivity, ranging from supporting the same basic dial-in architecture used a decade ago to interconnecting offices over the Internet by using VPN connections.