multiple IP addresses and electronic journals

[Peter Murray]

--On Tuesday, April 17, 2001 9:33 AM -0700 cruby <cruby at micron.com> 
wrote:

> Before I have to track down all the new IP address ranges and then
> start working with the publishers to add the addresses to our account
> or switch to passwords,  I'd like to see if there is any way to set
> things up so that, say someone in Italy, can go to our library web
> site based in Boise and gain access to the journal contents with the
> Boise IP address rather than the Italy address.

Bill and Robin have suggested EZproxy as a solution to your problem, 
and EZproxy is a good solution to the general problem of remote access 
to research databases.  However, I think you have a more specific 
problem.  To restate your problem, you want to find a way to funnel 
specific IP addresses from other libraries through an IP address at 
your Boise library which all of the database vendors accept as valid.

Probably the easiest thing to do to solve this specific problem is to 
set up a generic proxy server in Boise and restrict access at that 
proxy server to the specific IP address ranges of your remote 
libraries.  Just about any proxy server can be set up with those sort 
of restrictions (Apache, Squid, MS Proxy, etc...).

You'll probably want to set up a proxy autoconfig file for all of those 
remote workstations so that they know about your proxy server in Boise, 
and you can set things up such that your Boise proxy server interceeds 
in connections that are going to database vendors.


Peter
--
Peter Murray, Computer Services Librarian              W: 860-570-5233
University of Connecticut Law School             Hartford, Connecticut