Outlook connecting to Exchange 5.5 over the Internet

[BrotherJones]

Hello all. I have a client and during a brief discussion, I found out that they have multiple remote sites that are connected to the internet via dsl or cable. At these sites, the users are using either Outlook 2k, xp or 2k3. They connect back to their exchange server directly over the internet. From what I understand, they punched holes through their cisco pix firwall to allow communications between the exchange server and the outlook clients.
No vpn or ssl certs being used.

So two part question -
1)if they left everything at its default, I know outlook would query the exchange server on port 135 to talk to the endpoint mapper. But what other services does the outlook client communicate with (that ports need to be opened for)

2)I believe that the ports mentioned above were statically configured and all outlook clients were configured with these static ports to communicate with exchange. I know that rpc over http(s) isn't available in this version. So if they dont deploy a vpn tunnel, is there any other way to use the outlook client to communicate with exchange (while encrypting the data) I'm thinking secure imap.

Side note, in Outlook 2k3 there is a security setting that says encrypt data between MS Outlook and MS Exchange server. I'm guessing that using that doesn't require ssl?

thanks

 

[fuego007]

You're probably dealing with Pop3 and SMTP, but you can find out by talking with an end user and having them tell you how their client is configured. This is your best bet, rather than guessing, as they could also be using the imap4 protocol. On the encryption issue, I don't know for certain, but I don't think Exchange 5.5 supports encryption between the client and server.

When all else fails, READ THE DAMN BOOK!