[AccessD] Replication concept

Folks,

I just wanted to run an idea past you guys.  One of the concerns expressed
by my client's users was the time required for changes to ripple around if
we used the "standard" replication scheme of a BE on every desktop.  It
occurred to me that perhaps the client could create 2 or 3 "servers" where
each server had a copy of the BE.  Instead of 25-30 users all linked into a
single back end, have 10 users each (roughly) linked into one of three BEs.
Those three BEs then replicated amongst themselves.  The business breaks
down into three distinct sets of users (business groups) so that perhaps all
members of a group could link to the same BE, thus getting instant access to
the changes from it's group and yet still have rapid access to changes from
the other two business groups since the replication circuit would consist of
only three BEs instead of 30.

This would allow other advantages as well if the client wanted to pursue
them, such as segmented networks, with each server having it's own routers
and thus the traffic routed to each server would drop considerable.

My question to you is, does the idea of a small number of BEs (probably 3),
sitting on servers, replicating amongst themselves, linked to the FEs on
users desktop machines - does this idea make sense?

John W. Colby
www.colbyconsulting.com