VPN stands for "Virtual Private Network". It is a process that allows you to connect your computer at home (or laptop travelling), across the Internet, to the SPC network and have your computer behave as if it were directly connected to the SPC network. Why would you want to do this? Do you have shared files on a server that you would like to access? Would you like to be able to "Remote Desktop" to your computer? Would you like to configure Outlook for full Microsoft Exchange support at home? With VPN you can do all of these things. The following instructions are for Windows computers and apply to those computer NOT connected to the SPC network by other means (such as SPC dialup or SPC DSL)

• Windows XP/Vista installation instructions
• Mac OS 10.4 (PPC and Intel) installation instructions

Now, you can run Outlook and configured it for Exchange. After it's configured, whenever you want to check email, you will have to establish the VPN connection first. After you have the VPN connection established, you will also have full access to all internal resources, so, you can, for example, do Start -> Run -> -> \\computername\sharename to access internal server resources.

You can also Remote Desktop to your computer in your office and many other things.