How Do I Enable DFS Replication Between Hosts Separated by a Firewall?

For the full details and original text, see http://windowsitpro.com/active-directory/q-how-do-i-enable-dfs-replication-between-hosts-separated-firewall.

Procedure

DFS Replication (DFSR) normally uses the remote procedure call (RPC) dynamic Endpoint Mapper, which is difficult to support through a firewall.

You can configure DFSR to use a static port instead of a dynamic one by using the dfsrdiag command, then restarting DFSR.

Example:

You can verify the change by typing the command below and looking at the RpcPortAssignment value, which if it shows a value of 0 means it is using dynamic ports. (Anything other than 0 indicates the static port configured.)

To really double-check that the static port is being used, you can inspect the port listener. First, find the process ID of dfsrs.exe:

It might return something like this, for example:

Now search a netstat -ano for the process ID, which will find the port being listened on.

In this case, below, it shows port 5722, which was the static port configured: