Network Drive Mapping for users who have Port 445 (possibly others) Blocked by their ISP to a Server 2008 system

Question

Nice to see my original posts are still up.  I was hoping that in the ensuing time someone had found a solution.  At least I can now see many other posting the same problems.  :)  Thought I was losing it for a while.
We have 100% proven that the problem (in our case) is from the ISP blocking port 445 (possibly others but 445 for SURE) with the reasoning that it prevents the spread of some Internet "worms".  It also just happens to prevent people who work
from home from being able to map to their network drives at work.
What I was hoping was that eventually someone would comer up with a solution for this short of having to load a server using a different OS from Windows.  The SMB protocol is the one needing port 445 as far as I can tell.  Not all ISP block
port 445 and the laptops that use those ISP's  have no problem.  Unless they travel.  Then it is "hit or miss" as to whether the ISP for the Hotel they stay at blocks it.
I have run multiple tests to prove that this was in FACT the problem.  Even the particular ISP in question which is a very large national ISP company freely admits they do this supposedly to prevent the spread of an unnamed Internet Worm.  It also
happens to prevent Business use of their Internet by Home Subscribers at they cannot map to their Business Servers which also need port 445 to map.
I have used WebDAV successfully to get around this but at a huge loss of speed and performance.  Cloud services all do essentially the same thing and all have pretty much the same loss of speed.
If anyone has come across a method of allowing a drive mapping to be rerouted to any other port, that is the only hope I have short of changing to an alternate OS for the Office Server and even then I cant be sure until I try if it would help.  I read
somewhere about the possibility of routing through a proxy but again, the problem would still be that the requests for mapping are expected on port 445 on the server and they will not get through even to the proxy since the originating ISP is the one blocking
the port from the User's system. 
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated  I have posted this question now for several years with no one yet providing a working solution.  Hope burns Eternal though :)

Answer 1

Yes, OwnCloud is an option as well as many others.  Even self hosted Cloud services such as the WD MyCloud all work.  The problem is speed.  JungleDisk is the best I have found so far.  I am not sure exactly what they use to allow the
drive mapping but it seems to work faster that anything else I have found.
VPN's don't work.  At least none of them I have tried.   I can connect a VPN with no problem.  But still cannot map a drive over it.   Actually, there are some issues with the VPN as well but these are just a matter of methodology. 
Mapping to the FQDN works for some people while others require the public IP.  Some users on some ISP's can map using the FQDN, others have to map to the IP.  That in itself was a bit odd.
I have tried every trick I could find including adding  the IP and/or FQDN to the Windows Hosts file on the server as well as on the client systems.  This actually did help to get the VPN to connect in some cases.  However, it still would
not allow me to map a drive letter.
I can create a Network Place,  This also works.  But it will not allow me to MAP that "network place" to a drive letter.  I have tried multiple utilities that allow mapping of Drive letters to almost anything but they wont work to map to a
Network Place.
The software that needs the mapped drive is a SQL database which runs on port 2004.  The program itself has no problems at all connecting to the server to run the database.  Even on systems which cannot map to the needed drive letter for the documents
referred to in the database.    Users can run it and look up all kinds of material but it it is only a half-solution since the database refers to files stored in a "common-mapped" drive letter.  Which I cannot Map.
I have tried every possible configuration of the VPN setup I could find, I have even tried a "Test System" with the NIC connected directly to the T1 Modem.  With all firewalls off and no AV software.  Even if that had worked,  there is no
way I could run like that.  But it didn't.  Same issues.  All this did was put the blame squarely on the User's ISP which was the only reason I did it.  I had to rule out even the slightest chance that it was something in our equipment.
This was already almost a certain fact since the same user could take their laptop to a WiFi Hotspot at a fast food restaurant and connect as well as map the drive.  As soon as they went back home, no drive.  On the ones I could convince to pay
the extra charges, if they switched to a business connection from their ISP, No Problems.
On most MiFi or other Cellular Internet devices, No Problem,  Although that had a habit of changing.  We had a few that worked for a while, then they got a software update for their MiFi which immediately blocked the ability to map.  Others
it would be that some models of Cellular HotSpot units worked while other would not work even if both came from the same carrier.
Coincidentally, we had none of these problems before two other events occurred: 
One was the release of Server 2008 R2, (which was a kid of "surprise" change for all of us used to Server 2008 R1.  Welcomed changes, but not expected with a simple SP release. 
The other was IPV6 finally became a reality:  June of 2012.
This left us with much head scratching as to what was the real cause of the problem.  It took months to narrow it down to port blocking by the Outside ISP's with a 100% certainty.  Even tried reloading a system with Server 2008 R1 just to rule
that out.  As well as disabling IPV6 on every network device.  The problem stayed with the User when Outside and which ISP they were connected to.
Currently we are using a mix of normal VPNs for those who can run them, and CLOUD access for those who can't.  Even this is problematic since we have to keep both the local copy and the cloud copy in constant sync so that everyone sees the same versions
of the same files on each one.
Sorry to make this so long but I wanted to cover everything to show that we tried it all.  The only thing left short of getting the ISP's to remove the port blocks would be to find a way to route the SMB file requests around port 445 in some way. 
I have been told that this is easy enough if using a file system other than Windows but that is not an option even if true. 
Thanks for the updates and ideas.  I keep hoping that eventually there will be some secure method for mapping a drive letter that does not depend on having port 445.