Can an online computer work from the offline cache?

So here is a stumper for me an my team:

We have only a handful of DC and file server sites across a fully
meshed 250+ site network. All sites are T1 or better. However, we have
mobile user complaints of file slowness when traveling between sites.
This is typically the case for mobile users with large server-
redirected and synchronized home drives. Here has been our thought
process so far:

1) After redirecting the home drives, we set the GPO for slow link
detection. We ended up however having occasional problems with users
dropping offline unexpectedly, so turned off slow link detection.
2) After turning off slow link detection, everyone was happy EXCEPT
mobile users when online at remote sites. Even though they
synchronize, they are working from the server copy of their files
across the WAN. Also, in the case of users with very large home
folders the time to synch irrates them, although that is something
they can live with. They do NOT want to go offline because of course
they then lose connection to all other network resources such as
mapped drives, UNC connections, and network served printers.

So the question is this: can a workstation be configured to work from
the offline cache even though it is "online?" This would deal with
both our desire to not have any data stored on the workstations
without server-side replication but would also allow users to work
quickly when remote but online.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!


elee@thesaddlehorse.com