How can I determine the type of connection a client computer has to the network?

Question

I need to come up with a list of conditions to determine the location of a client computer. Eventually I'll need to be able to tell if the client is connected to our network from the office (private network), from VPN tunnel (virtual private network through SonicWall), or from any other outside network. What are some ways that I could tell which connection method a computer is using at any given time?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the more reliable methods are all pay-for-service

systems; Akamai provides this type of connection speed and

location mapping service, as does Quova and IP2Location.

Some of them do allow a limited number of free queries through

their website, but none of them allow free programmatic queries

through an API.  

If you control the end computer, you can look at installing

something like Sygate on each machine to track its connection

type, and have it report back what kind of connection it's on,

but again, that's a commercial/paid solution which can get

relatively expensive if you have large numbers of machines you

need to track.

It's definitely not an easy issue to tackle, I'm afraid.  Best of

luck with it!