[Samba] best, safest and easiest way to provide remote access to files on linux machine

[Heupink, Mourik Jan C.]

dear list.

this question is rather related to samba, although not exclusively. I
consider it related enough to ask here, please apologise if you don't.

we are in the process of setting up a samba domain at my company. a goal is
to replace our current nt4 servers. another goal is to provide an easy way
to access the documents on the lan (and peoples home directories) from
'outside' (anywhere on the internet)

A way to do this, seems to be the so called 'web folders', which appears to
be the m$ name for webdav.

Now the questions. I'm sure that wanting this is very common, I guess lot's
of you experts have setup similar things in the places you work. So, the
questions:

Is web folders the way to go? And how to implement this server-side?
(mod_dav does not seem to be able to do exactly what i want) (davenport,
http://davenport.sourceforge.net/ doesn't seem very mature) What are the
alternatives? (either open source, or paid software) (suse openexchange 4.1
(http://www.suse.com/us/business/products/openexchange/) seems to have some
sort of webdav interface. any experiences if that will do what i want?)

Any experiences in user authentication? Things I should keep into
consideration when setting up my samba domain? (as nothing has been setup
yet, so we can completely start from scratch)

Any comments would be very much appreciated!

Again apologies for the slight off-topic issue. Just pointers in the right
direction would be appreciated, and, in case someone knows, but doesn't want
to continue this discussion here, please don't hestitate to contact me
directly.

Have a nice weekend all of you!
Mourik Jan