But I have no numbers.

I work from home frequently hooked up on Win2k over a PPTP VPN. Getting and sending mail that way versus just using OWA without being connected to the VPN is noticeably faster. Incidentally, IE 6.0 won't work with whatever setup our LAN guy has, so I use Mozilla on Win2K or Linux to get to OWA. (I never use IE, anyway.) This could all be in the way our wonderful sys admin has everything set up..he don't impress me much (to borrow a line from Shania (drool)). :)