Recently we've started exploring options of giving staff members robust laptops and docking stations as opposed to running the typical desktop tower set up. This will give our staff the flexibility to take work with them wherever they go including home. I've been experimenting with the set up at home recently and have some questions...
A little background: I have my personal PC at home and used to VPN to my desktop computer that in the office. It worked OK, I never wanted to do any real 'heavy lifting' from home, but it worked great in a pinch. This option was very much a function of my internet connection.
So now... I have this fancy laptop that I can take home with me, and instead of VPN-ing to the office I simply map our network servers through a VPN client and can access and open my Revit central models through there. I assumed that once I had grabbed a local copy of the central I would be off to the races... Apparently that's not quite how it works. Revit is still maintaining a "heartbeat" between the local copy and the central model, that again, is very much a function of the internet connection and was noticing some definite lag time between mundane tasks, not just syncing to central. Once I restarted my internet hardware (modem and router) my internet speeds drastically increased to closer to what I pay for (different story altogether), the performance I was experiencing was noticeably increased as well.
The question I have, short of checking out worksets and all that so I am truly working locally, is there a way to circumvent some of these issues? Or will my staff always be limited to whatever internet service they've paid for at their residence? Would turning down the worksharing update frequency help reduce some of this lag time? If I reduce that to every 60 seconds, or to manual, what are the ramifications to that; I haven't found much information regarding that topic.
What are some best practices when working remotely on a workshared Revit file?