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Re: VPN
- To: Multiple recipients of list <epc-l@iucr.org>
- Subject: Re: VPN
- From: Lachlan Cranswick <l.m.d.cranswick@dl.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 13:26:09 +0100 (BST)
> Thats not what I had in mind.
>
> Its rather the many academic institutions who have a subscription to
>the IUCr journals. Access to the journals is limited to subnets. In
>other words you have to be on site to get access. VPN gets around this
>by allowing access into the local net from outside hence permitting
>access to the journals from outside the sub net. i.e. You don't have to
>be on site, you don't have to be employed any more by the institution,
>visitors could manage to keep access for years on end, etc. That what I
>had in mind.
Re the IUCr Journals
Are VPM meant to be a problem to the IUCr or a feature ?
In theory, the person normally has to be an employee or of special
status to that local institution to get a VPM.
As a possible irrelevance - you don't need an extra VPM to do
the above:
If you have an account on a remote network machine - you can just
secure shell to this and use Lynx or another ASCII web browser to browse
the web - giving you access to most facilities supported by using
IP authentication.
----------
In theory, I could secure shell to Columbia University (I still
have an account) - then browse the IUCr journals from there
via Lynx. However, not much point on doing this as Birkbeck
have a subscription to the IUCr journals.
I think most people would be in this situation - if they had a need
for the journals - they would normally be at an institution that
had a subscription? Plus if they didn't and were doing the above -
my hunch is it would be an incentive for them to argue for full
local institutional access - given (based on experience) doing
this type of tunnelling can be very slow, problematic and highly
frustrating.
I have been in this situation after moving from Columbia University
to Birkbeck with some other databases. It is a real pain doing what
you infer/imply as most web databases need graphical webbrowsers to
function. Speed issues makes it very impractical to do this.
e.g., From London, open a session with New York - then tunnel a
graphical Netscape sessions.
Lachlan.
PS: If you were really worried about this, I would suggest that
having a journals website that would only work with graphical
(non-ascii browsers) would significantly kill the problem - given
people can already use telnet/ssh and an ASCII web browser to do this
type of thing.
PPS: Another suggestion is to request subscribing insitutions
to please confirm they are not giving external people remote
access to this via remote computer accounts. It is very easy
for computing facilities to stop certain types of
activities from remote users. Most institutions I have been
at try to be legal about this things.
-----------------------
Lachlan M. D. Cranswick
Collaborative Computational Project No 14 (CCP14)
for Single Crystal and Powder Diffraction
Birkbeck University of London and Daresbury Laboratory
Postal Address: CCP14 - School of Crystallography,
Birkbeck College,
Malet Street, Bloomsbury,
WC1E 7HX, London, UK
Tel: (+44) 020 7631 6850 Fax: (+44) 020 7631 6803
E-mail: l.m.d.cranswick@dl.ac.uk Room: B091
WWW: http://www.ccp14.ac.uk/
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