The number of people working from home, branch offices and other locations outside their normal place of employment is set to grow over the next few years. Analyst firm IDC predicts that the number of teleworkers in Europe will reach 28.8 million in 2005, almost triple the number in 2000.

During their time out of the office, the vast majority of these people will need to remain in regular contact with their colleagues, either by telephone or email, or a combination of the two. For this, nothing more than a standard telephone, a PC with a modem and an ISP account are generally required. Email can also be sent and received using a combination of a handheld PC and GSM mobile phone, providing convenient connectivity for those employees who are on the move.

But many staff working from home will have to stay connected to a variety of office information systems, and these often require more bandwidth than dial-up modem or GSM links can provide.

Many workers regularly need to transfer large data files, such as reports, presentations, graphics and photographs, between locations. Access to complex back-end databases and other information resources, often in real time, may also be essential. Some staff will also need to maintain a virtual presence in the office, perhaps taking part in meetings through video conferencing, and collaborating on documents and spreadsheets using a whiteboard application.

Fact finding

The Internet is often a vital source of information for staff, serving as an unofficial fact-finding engine and mail transfer medium, and sometimes providing access to shared resources. But browsing the Web over slow and unreliable dial-up analogue links can take up an inordinate amount of time, and may frustrate users by restricting the type of information that can be accessed.

Increased bandwidth is therefore necessary for many teleworkers. High on their wish lists are home broadband links offering instant access to office systems, as well as usable point-to-point communication applications, quick file transfers and smooth Internet browsing.

Unfortunately, broadband services are not available to everyone who needs them. More telecoms carriers and service providers are now offering Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) links. But services can only be offered in areas where BT has upgraded its local telephone exchanges to carry DSL traffic, and potential subscribers need to live within 5.5km of an exchange before they can obtain a 512kbit/s link.

Similar limitations apply to cable modem services operated by NTL and Telewest. These offer the same bandwidth as DSL for a similar price, but are only available in specific areas of the UK - primarily cities and towns - where the operators have fibre-optic infrastructure.

With satellite services remaining prohibitively expensive and mesh radio systems still in the process of being developed, the only other current option for teleworkers is ISDN. But at 128kbit/s this may not offer enough of an improvement compared with analogue modem connections to make the switch worthwhile.

Even where ADSL or cable services are available, there are reasons why they may not be suitable for teleworkers. For a start, both types of service are asynchronous, meaning they are optimised for Internet access by maximising the download rate at the expense of the upload rate, which is generally limited to 128kbit/s or 256kbit/s. Employees who need to send large quantities of data to the office may find this unacceptably restrictive.

Unauthorised access

Another deterrent is a lack of security. Most large organisations are concerned about the safety of the data that passes between their employees, and are suspicious about always-on ADSL connections that can be hijacked by hackers to gain unauthorised access to company databases.

However, there are a number of methods for improving security. One is to deploy a personal firewall for each user. This is cheap and straightforward to configure. Another solution is to set up a virtual private network (VPN) based on Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Such VPNs are much less vulnerable to security breaches than personal firewalls, but they are far more expensive to set up, and the cost might only be justified for key workers.

One cheap way for teleworkers to make their home PCs more secure is to simply disable file-and-print sharing, keep an eye on the security settings in email and browser software, and make sure that no Web servers are running in parallel with their communication sessions.

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