Overview

Remote access is an integral part of the corporate mission. Traveling sales people, executives, remote-office staff, and telecommuters all need to communicate by connecting to the main office LAN. The need for electronic information makes remote data access almost as necessary as a telephone.

In the previous chapter, "Configuring Asynchronous Connections with Modems," you learned the technology and tasks necessary to establish an analog dialup connection. In this chapter, you will learn how to use that dialup connection to connect to the network and exchange data.

You will learn, more specifically, about PPP, which is often used to link remote nodes and remote LANs together. This chapter focuses especially on the authentication methods used by PPP-Password Authentication Protocol (PAP) and the Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP).