The CIFS mounts can't be unmounted without a reboot,
so they build-up a pool of mounts to the same server which cause extra
latency
Is there an environmental restriction in your application or organization for this? Normally CIFS mounts can umounted easily in runtime.
At any rate... if I were in your shoes and really restricted to the options you propose, I would go with CIFS mounts through IPSEC tunnels.
-geoff
--------------------------------- Geoff Galitz Blankenheim NRW, Germany http://www.galitz.org/ http://www.galitz.org/ http://german-way.com/blog/ http://german-way.com/blog/