when a firewall can't act as a proxy server for a service

[Info Galway Library]

Hi,

We connect to the web through a firewall. The firewall acts as a proxy
server for the http protocol. Its ip address is specified in the browser as
the proxy server.

We are attempting to connect a z39.50 client, Bookwhere to be precise, to a
z39.50 server through the same firewall. No proxy service is available for
this protocol on our firewall. It is not possible to specify the firewall's
ip address anywhere within the client.

There is a rule set up in the firewall to allow z39.50 communication
through.

Lately, we had the idea of specifying the firewall as the default gateway
since we can't specify it as the proxy server. We tried this unsuccessfully
with http (the browser is connecting without a proxy server and the default
gateway is the firewall).

My question is this; can this approach be made to work with any client
wherein the address of the firewall is not specified? If we can get it to
work with http, presumably we will be able to make it work with z39.50. How
are workstations configured when it is not possible to specify a proxy
server within the browser? This problem must have arisen with older
browsers.

Any help would be much appreciated?

Regards
John Fitzgibbon
 
Galway Public Library
Island House
Cathedral Square
Galway
Ireland
 
http://www.galwaylibrary.ie 

Phone: 00 353 91 562471
Fax: 00 353 91 565039