Web access for remote dial-up patrons

[Paul Peeling]

On Thu, 25 Jan 1996, Christopher Jackson wrote:

> 
> I'm wondering if there are any libraries out there allowing web access to 
> dial-up users who do not have internet accounts.
> 
> We're considering providing such users with access to Lynx.  They'd dial 
> in; login to our UNIX machine using a generic login; and upon login Lynx 
> would start up on our home page.  Quitting Lynx would end the session 
> and hang up the modem.
> 
> Has anyone done this?  What are the potential problems?

We have had a setup similar to this for just over a year. We only had one 
problem (which was easy to fix) but there is at least one policy issue 
which may be problematic.

The problem we had to fix: our generic user account should have been set 
up to run in a restricted shell.  It was not and the version of Lynx we 
had- 2.37, could be broken out of. This left the user sitting at a Korn 
shell prompt, with access to much of the Unix syxtem, same as a regular 
user account would have. Once we fixed the restricted shell, we had 
no more trouble.

The policy issue: when you compile and configure Lynx, you will have to
decide whether or not to let the anonymous account have access to the "Go"
command which will let the user enter a random URL. Keep in mind that the
user can specify a telnet address as a URL. Because a user could use this
to connect to freenet acounts or MUDs or check email when out of town,
some folks view the opportunity to do this as outside the services they
intend to provide. 

> I would ideally like to provide such users with full web access--they 
> could leave our site and go anywhere they choose.  However, some staff 
> are afraid that free web access, even text-based, would result in 
> endless busy signals for most users.  Any thoughts here?

Obviously, this is a function of how many lines are available, but here 
is a bit of a case study. We provide access to our PAC, our web server 
and serve as a local phone call access point to a similar system 
supported by the state library organization. We were pretty comfortable 
on 16 lines, but had a grant opportunity to double to 32. We've not had 
any complaints at that level.

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| Paul Peeling                        ppeeling at mail.bcpl.lib.md.us |
| Administrator, Internetworking		                   |
| Baltimore County Public Library     Voice: (410) 887-6148        | 
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