Fire walls and multiple IP addresses - can they be?

[Masters, Gary E]

For several years now, we have been trying to work our way out of a problem.
Most of the vendors want to sell us services and subscriptions that limit
access to our FDA Center by IP address.  However, since all of FDA has the
same IP address as a result of its fire wall configuration, we have problems
with individual vendors.  Some will go along with it and others want us to
pay for all of FDA.  Since we are the only center to use some engineering
and science sources, this is difficult to sell to our superiors.

However the point of this question is to get up to date on fire wall
technology.  I was told the year before last that our technology (I think it
is called Raptor) would be able to deliver more than one IP address to an
organization.  Since then, with some looking on my part, I have not seen if
this is possible or not.  Nobody in FDA had mentioned this and those who run
our fire wall are not convinced that it would be of value to have more than
one IP address.  Not so far as I know, at my position many levels below.

Is it a reasonable and "easy" process to have a fire wall now which can
allow individual areas to have individual IP addresses?

Or is there another solution to this problem?

We have tried passwords, but that is another tale of pain and woe.

I understand that some libraries don't even worry about it, but we want to
stay honest.

Thanks, 

Gary Masters



Gary E. Masters
Librarian (Systems)
CDRH - FDA
(301) 827-6893