A question on proxy telnets...

[Anthony Toyofuku]

Hi,

This is a rather technical question, but I hope it's appropriate here...

I'm putting the finishing touches on a proxy telnet daemon that allows
authenticated users to telnet to fee-based databases, such as OCLC
Firstsearch or RLG databases.

After the use clicks on "connect to OCLC's FIRSTSEARCH " (or whatever
site it may be), the user, provided they have proper permission to use
the service, would telnet to the proxy, at a specific port, say
"telnet://stubbs.ucop.edu:1965", at which point my telnet proxy then
opens up a connection to OCLC, and acts as the middleman, supplying the
password, username, etc.

My question is this:  how have people set up their proxies so that they
connect to multiple databases? (ie "press here for RLG" and "press here 
for OCLC").  The way I have it now is by port number ("1965" for instance
for OCLC, "1966" for RLG, etc.).  I then have inetd configured to wait for
requests on these ports.

But, this requires an entry for each fee database in the "inetd.conf" 
file, as well as the entries in the "services" file, which seems rather
redundant to me.  However, I can't figure out a way around this.  Is there
a way to pass arguments through the telnet client that ALL telnet clients
can understand (like "telnet://stubbs.ucop.edu:1965 -l oclc")? 

Is there perhaps "another way" altogther?  

Any ideas to get the brain juices flowing are greatly appreciated.

Tony

Anthony Toyofuku
Programmer
Division of Library Automation
Office of the President
The University of California