Steve,

Here's a network drawing of my situation:

http://www.boosten.org/media/tunnel.png

On the left hand side I use my desktop on my work to create a ssh session to my FreeBSD server (ra). For this purpose I use putty, piggybacking the ssh protocol over http (through the proxy). So far straight forward (blue line).

In putty I defined a local port 3389, connecting to xp (the Windows XP in my home network), again on port 3389. It's important that the FreeBSD box can resolve the name you type in here. For this purpose I could use any local port but your application (in my case Remote Desktop) has to be able to connect to different ports. The red line shows the path the traffic flows. From my work desktop however this looks like a direct connection with my home XP.

When I connect to my FreeBSD box, a local port 3389 opens. When I start Remote Desktop on my work desktop, and connect to localhost, then Remote Desktop connects through the ssh tunnel to xp (my home XP).

In theory you could configure putty to connect your local rpc ports (137-139) to a machine in your central location. Your client then would make a connection with \\localhost. There are two things to consider: the local ports have to be closed before starting putty (that means no server service on the windows machine, in my case no Remote Desktop allowed _to_ my work desktop). The second 'downside' is that you can only connect to one machine in the central location. In my case I could setup several local ports (3390, 3391) pointing to different machines in my home network, but I don't think it's possible to direct rpc services to other ports.

If things are still unclear, don't hesitate to contact me.

Peter

-- http://www.boosten.org Mail: peter at boosten dot org