seeking IP "substituter"

[Bob Samson]

Many of our database services are contractually limited to use by 
affiliated faculty, staff, and students of the university.  As a 
means of complying with these restrictions, we have invoked IP domain 
restrictions for access to these databases.

The problem arises when legitimate users access our homepage from 
their commercial ISP accounts and the IP wrappers prevent these users 
from accessing the various database services.  Since our computer 
center does not provide SLIP or PPP service, remote users, e.g. 
distance education users, as well as anyone who just wants to access 
our service from home, must go through commercial ISPs for access 
(unless they want to limit themselves to TELNET/Lynx access, in which 
case they can come in through the computer center).

I'd be curious to know if anyone has found, or developed, some sort 
of IP "substituter" which, upon validation by matching an entry in 
some sort of security database, would substitute a "valid" IP address 
for subsequent access to a local homepage and beyond.  I'm familiar 
with the Anonymizer, i.e. http://www.anonymizer.com, which does 
basically the opposite.  It would be a fairly simple matter to 
accumulate a database of valid patron IDs from which the 
"substituter" could search for a match.  The trick, then,  is to 
substitute a pseudo IP address for the remainder of the session so 
that the IP wrappers perceive the user as belonging to the 
appropriate domain.

If anyone has any ideas on this, I'd be interested in hearing them.

Many thanks.

Bob


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Bob Samson                          * samson at library.uta.edu
Assistant Director for              *
   Information Technologies         * http://www.uta.edu/library/
University Libraries                *
University of Texas at Arlington    * (817) 272-3728
P.O. Box 19497                      *
Arlington, TX   76019               * (817) 272-5797  fax
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