SQL over VPN - upload vs download speeds

[pom009]

Hi all.
This is my first post so please forgive me (and point out) if I'm doing anything wrong.
Our company's database runs on Microsoft SQL Server 2012, with a Microsoft Access front-end. We have two stores: one in Sydney and one in Melbourne. The SQL Server is hosted in Sydney, and the two sites are connected via VPN. Both sites use ADSL2+.
For the users in Sydney, obviously there is no speed problem when using the database since they're on the same LAN as the SQL Server.
However in Melbourne it's quite slow. Not unusable, but slow enough to effect productivity. I'm thinking of upgrading the internet connections at one of the two sites.
My question is this: which site would be better to upgrade? And what kind of connection would you recommend? (e.g. SHDSL, bonded DSL)
SHDSL at Sydney looks like the best option at this stage, since I'm guessing the bottleneck is the upload speed at Sydney (currently around 0.85 Mb/s). Internode are promising 5 Mb/s both ways, and they refer to it as '1:1 uncontended'. How realistic is it that I'd get a huge improvement in upload speeds?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. แทงบอลสเต็ป
Thanks!

[fabian]

I don't know much about this database software but I would recommend you to mirror the server in a failover setup so it can sync automatically and you can just query the local server. In that case you only have to transport queries that do changes (update, delete, truncate, ...) but select will always (except you have a real failover) be possible with LAN speed.

[ChrisH]

My question is this: which site would be better to upgrade?

The one where the database is. Obviously.

Replication as suggested by fabian is the better solution, but might be expensive depending on the existing infrastructure in Melbourne (new server hardware, additional SQL license and CALs...).

Depending on how many users you have in Melbourne and how stupid Access does its SQL queries it might also be better to run the Access frontend only in Sydney and access it from Melbourne via Remote Desktop...