By 'sane' if you mean safe, the safest way to do something like this is to setup 
a VPN tunnel to your server.  By doing so, a remote laptop 'sees' itself as being 
a part of the local network.  All communications are encrypted, and you join the 
network with an AD integrated username and password.  This capability is built into 
windows server 2003 routing and remote access and windows XP.  Check out this 
link to one of many technet articles explaining how to setup a VPN connection. 
 A VPN is the safest and most reliable way to do what you are trying to do.  It requires 
no extra configuration on the client other than setting up the VPN connection.  Once 
the client is connected to the VPN he may access the network in the exact same way 
as if he were connected locally on the LAN.

You may also use something called WebDAV.  This is a protocol for publishing file 
shares over HTTP (the Web).  But be careful, hackers target this system and you must 
make sure you completely understand the permissions on your file system and shares. 
 WebDAV uses IIS to 'publish' file shares on the internet.  WebDAV shares can be 
accessed through Internet Explorer, or any other WebDAV client, and they can be mapped 
to a logical drive letter on the client PC.  WebDAV too can be set to use 'inegrated 
authentication' which will authenticate users against AD, and will encrypt files 
automatically before sending them over the internet.

If you wanted to use WebDAV, you would publish each 'My Document' folder on the server 
with IIS so that the appropriate user had access to it.  To simplify things and make 
the transition seemless, I would make sure the client could access the WebDAV folder 
from inside the LAN and over the internet.  Then use group policy to redirect the 
users 'My Documents' folder to a local drive letter, lets say 'M:'  After that it 
is a matter of simply mapping the drive letter  (M:) to the URL of the webDAV folder 
you published.  A login script or batch file on the user's desktop utilizing the 
'NET USE' command could help ensure the M: drive stays mapped properly in case the 
connection is broken.  Go here 
for a brief description of the HTTP file sharing protocol (webDAV) and how to set 
it up.  There may be an easier way if you search around a little.  Again, I can't 
stress enough, make sure you have permissions and authentication setup properly.






On Wednesday, July 11, 2007 at 1:58 am, Wayne Davis wrote:

>Is there a relatively sane way to share user roaming My Documents across the internet? 

>Something that will integrate with AD? 

 

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