If they do contain firewalls, you are probably going to run into problems. I have got a similar problem before where the firewall allowed checking of email enabled, so wrote a script to check a particular pop email account every 1/2 hour or so. If I wanted to do something I would just email a specially formatted email to the address and the program would pick it up and do its job. Not the safest way of doing things perhaps, but a good work around for me. Regards, Gerard