It seems that it is indeed possible to deploy SMS packages to clients that aren’t on your local network. As long as your SMS server is reachable through the firewall on port 80, the clients will continue to report inventory information and recieve packages whenever they are connected to the internet. The one big “gotcha” in this scenario…
Make sure your distribution point is also accessible from the interenet on port 80. If your distribution point is on a file server that isn’t accessible then you will be disappointed with the results.