Thanks for all the replies so far on this. I've been given further information that the end user wants to connect to all of the devices on the PLC lan at will, so now I am considering setting up openvpn to allow them to connect to the network here and pull an ip address that is on the lan of the PLC devices, this way they can connect to any device on the network.
From what I understand reading the openvpn docs, I just install this
on the server, tell openvpn to dish out an ip address in the range of the PLC lan and install the windows client on his laptop and it's done? -- -=/>Thom