Hello, I have a scenario I'd like to put out and see if anyone can help. I
have a windows 2003 R2 network with an internal and perimeter network, the
internal is fully windows 2003 and all users have access to mapped drives on
the file server, we also have exchange 2007 server. In the perimeter network
we have a frontend webserver hosting a public site and another box hosting
the edge exchange 2007 server.

I want to achieve simple remote access to user from home or roaming with
laptops without the need for VPN's, Exchange is easy and has been setup for
OWA or the outlook client over HTTP, the problem I have is access to the file
system and specifically the network drives they have access to. I'd like to
give them access to certain network drives or folders somehow without mapping
them over a VPN. I've thought about ftp etc but I figure there must be plenty
of need for this out there and other companies must have easily achieved it
with it being pretty much a microsoft shop....... so I want to see how others
do it can anyone assist or provide advice.

Thanks

VPN is the standard approach, although an alternative is to map port 445 (or
139) via an encrypting protocol such as SSH or Zebedee. If you take the
latter route then you should require the client to provide the key each
session, this gives much better security.