request for proxy server advice

[Jim Stemper]

The University of Minnesota Libraries are interested in making their
electronic resources more widely available to distributed learners and
faculty working off-campus, who often cannot or choose not to enter the
Libraries' web thru the campus SLIP pool.  We've looked at various
authentication alternatives for users; restricting by IP has proven too
complex given our large number of users, and it is difficult to keep track
of new user IPs, and so we are exploring proxy servers in greater depth.
Has anyone had experience, good or bad, with proxy servers?  I am
particularly interested in knowing the number of users you serve and
whether a proxy server has been able to handle significant network traffic.

If you could respond to me personally, I would be happy to post a short
summary to the list.  Thank you.

***************************************************
  Jim Stemper
  University Libraries              /               Digital Media Center
  University of Minnesota, 117 Pleasant St. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455
  (612) 624-7082                                   (612) 625-5055
  http://www.lib.umn.edu/                        http://www-dmc.tc.umn.edu/
  stemp003 at gold.tc.umn.edu                     Fax: (612) 625-5525