Switching between broadband and LAN (Outlook 2000)

[Loafer]

Call me Old Mr Thicky but I have a problem with a remote user who's just switched to broadband. Previously they dialled a Freephone number which would allocate them an IP address on our network and they'd carry on as if they were in the office. Should they ever come back into the office the DHCP server would dish them out a number and they'd still be fine. Only thing is now they're on Wanadoo broadband at home i'm not sure how to get Outlook to recognise the two different connections. I've got them sending and receiving mail by setting the POP3 to the public IP of our mail server and SMTP to smtp.wanadoo.co.uk but the problem will arise tomorrow when they call into the office as we're behind a firewall and the only way I can see to get it working internally is if they set the incoming and outgoing mail server addresses to the private IP it was previously set to. This'll work but I just wondered (as I finally get to the point ...) if there's a simple way to setup separate Home & Office profiles but with everything coming into the same PST file as I'm sure they'll get in a mess if they have to fiddle with settings each time?

[AndrewO]

I'm curious how you get them to use the same PST file. I'd have thought that the home connection has its own PST unless you're using some other lower technology such as terminal server. Can you describe your setup more broadly - e.g. I'm assuming you don't use Exchange.

[jscher2000]

How are the user's typing skills? Typically Outlook gives an error message with a box where the user can change the name of the outgoing mail server, so the user could type the correct name once in the office and once at home. Yes, this would get old, so separate profiles could be set up, identical but for the account settings.

Plan C, though, would be to use a VPN solution for offsite access. The more secure but complicated way to to use a client that links to your firewall. The less secure but free way is to enable PPTP on one of your Windows servers and authenticate the user inside the firewall. Once the VPN connection is made, the user will receive a DHCP address for that connection from your internal server, and can use mail normally.