Can DFS Replication replicate between branch offices without a VPN connection?
Yes—assuming that there is a private Wide Area Network (WAN) link (not the Internet) connecting the branch offices. However, you must open the proper ports in external firewalls. DFS Replication uses the RPC Endpoint Mapper (port 135) and a randomly assigned ephemeral port above 1024. You can use the Dfsrdiag command line tool to specify a static port instead of the ephemeral port. For more information about how to specify the RPC Endpoint Mapper, see article 154596 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=73991).