atm i am setting up vpn connection for remote design as well, thus far journey has given me some good encounters. There is more than one way to skin a cat, but every skinning.. requires a Cat. A Cat being the dongle (server). Remote design station can connect to "dongle server" over VPN. Been there, done that. That is first thing you have to achieve (if vpn is set up correctly, it is just a matter of opening proper ports from server firewall). "Sniffing" licences from the dongle server do not generate much traffic, so it will work nicely over VPN
Then there is the OTHER data traffic between remote station and server. Most of the traffic is generated by scans and designs (fetching scans, saving designs),which can be quite "heavy duty". 3shape recommends to use standard client/server model which means all executables are residing on the server. It is... simply bad. Bad, Bad, Bad. Using that means ALL executables are downloaded from server before executing, also all associated libraries and materials are downloaded from server and that generates ****load more of traffic and result is totally insane loading times. You will start "pushing up the daisies" while waiting. i can promise you that.
You can use server installation on server but hell, use custom standalone install to remote station instead and export/import materials. That is the way to get programs executed truely locally (on remote design station).
What you MIGHT want to do is to save and fetch orders list (database) and scan data to/from your server. What you need to do is share "3shape output dir" and "manufacturing" dir so that it is accessible over vpn. Nowdays windows can connect to a share via tcpip. eg. connecting to \\192.168.1.1\3shape is possible instead of using name (rg. \\myserver\3shape) Sharing properties in Windows client and VPN gateway must be set up correctly in order to get those shares to work (either by IP or by name).
The network speed issue. it really does not matter do you have gigabyte thingies inside (local network) your lab. Outside (internet) connection speeds what matters. Upstream dictates how fast the connection to server is, and how well scan/order data is transferred: you can have fibre network connecting remote computer to internet, but if upstream from lab is 10mb/s, then speed is 10mb/s. And 10mb is not enough. From experience, 50ish (we use 50mb corporate-grade 4G connection) on server side is.. something that we can live with, i would recommend 100mb/s connection.
I must say that amount traffic 3shape generates (scans, orders designs) is so heavy and startup times on dental designer is soooooooooooo slow, that even more lightweight solution should be considered: just make remote client to sniff licences from the dongle server and use LOCAL database and LOCAL HDD (in remote design station) to store orders, scans and designs: Scan things at lab, export order and transfer that to remote computer by other means than 3shape, then import orders in remote computer. When finished designing, export order, move export-file to server and import order. Or just transfer finished STL file, less traffic (and no order/scan data!).
-- jussi