SpeedStreet

Apparently my post was too long to be read thoroughly.

Is this something my webhost can do? I don't manage my own DNS, so would I just ask them to setup a sub-domain with the A Record pointing to the public IP Address of my Router, which using port forwarding sends the requests to my server? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If you have someone managing your DNS for you, then yes.

I'll try to answer this, though I am only able to supply something resembling piecemeal without more information. 1. I assume Connection Manager is a different type of Remote Access software...not Microsoft's Terminal Services/ Remote Desktop Connection? If you were using RDP, the requests would bounce off your public router unless you configured port 3306 to forward to a computer on the internal network expecting such a connection. 2. When you speak of remote access, there are several things you may want to consider depending on your circumstances: a. If you have their computers set up to connect to Exchange, then the most useful course of action would be to configure VPN. That way, their computer will connect to the work network and act as if it were a PC on that network even from home. However, this may be a function limited by your firewall capabilities and/or SBS as I am not familiar with what restrictions MS put on it. b. Another option would be to use OWA, or Outlook Web Access. This way, users can login to a remote account through a web browser and work as if they were in Outlook on their own systems. Many IT peeps fight over whether or not this is a good idea or a bad (similar to the war over security in Terminal Services). Depending on whether or not you choose to use SSL or not, you will have to open port 80 (web) or port 443 (HTTPS). c. Setting up an A record in your domain DNS to point your MX domain to the same computer will (someone please correct me if I am wrong) enable you to access your mail through remote pop (port 110 must be open as well). However setting it up like this and not configuring it properly will enable users to pull messages directly off the mail server and they will not have them in their normal folders come the next work day. Being that I am not terribly familiar with your systems or hardware, I cannot lend to you a best course of action. You can always slap your Exchange server into the DMZ, but then you are really playing with fire. The solution I have implemented for my company is an interesting one I would recommend looking into: We purchased a remote dedicated server from a company that has Red Hat on it and CPanel. This way we have a solid mail server that is battle hardened against the Internet, and it is outsourced away from our company's private materials. We required no ports open on the firewall to do this, and everyone is fairly happy. The joint calendar and address book is a custom internet application that I wrote for our Intranet. Just a few thoughts from a guy taking a breather...let me know if this helps or if there is anything else I can do. And thanks for posting something that made a lurker actually register on this site - John