VPN and Proxy
From TorontoMathWiki
How to pretend that you are on University of Toronto network while actually you are not? Mainly it is necessary to access resources restricted to this network. The methods below require UTORID and password.
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VPN
VPN (Virtual Private Network) via UTORvpn.
is the best possible long-term solution but it requires s/w installation and thus puts limitations on possible platforms. Also one should remember that when tunnelling is active, all your connections (http, ssh, sftp, ...) are tunnelled. In particular, from the same computer you cannot use simultaneously tunnelled and non-tunnelled connections. This may be good or bad, depending on your needs.
Installation instructions can be found here.
Installation and Usage
***Note: Some people have suggested that following the more up-to-date instructions at UofT Instructions is simpler (more images and scripts to make things more automatic). We still appreciate Victor's work making this page before the UofT instructions were clearer.
After authentication by UTOID/password download software and configuration file. Please note that the default download of s/w is for Windows (so change it to MacOSX or Linux). Follow instructions
In particular for
MacOSX=
- copy application (Tunnelblick) to your disk (to /Applications folder). Run it, it will suggest to update, so update.
- Current stable Tunnelblick is 3.2.6 (compatible with MacOSX 10.4 - 10.8) and the official distribution is here: Download Tunnelblick; it is free; one can download also β version;
- place .ovpn file in ~/Library/openvpn which actually is a sytmlink to ~/Library/Application Support/Tunnelblick/Configurations
- When you run Tunnelblick it creates an icon in the right corner of menubar which contains items
- Connect/Disconnect utorvpn (I guess if you have few configuration files you will have the corresponding number of such items)
- VPN details
- Quit Tunnelblick
- There are other VPN clients for Mac (but you need to configure them on your own; configuration file is not available)
- IPSecuritas Free
- Viscosity Commercial
- IVPN Commercial
- etc
Windows
Linux
iOS
Unfortunately iOS does not support OpenVPN (unless jailbroken) but it supports L2TP, PPTP and IPSec; UToronto servers OpenVPN.
Unless either support of OpenVPN is added at iOS 6, or UToronto will support one of the above protocols, users of iPads, iPods and iPhones are out of luck.
Proxy
Proxy is more flexible, but also more limited.
To use University of Toronto Library Proxy one can
- go to http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca and log-in using UTORid and password
- then either browse library resources
- or go to constructed address
Note Using proxy for not library resources is not forbidden but you can be logged out due to inactivity as only library activity is counted.
Also only http and https connections go through this proxy, and only to specially formatted addresses
Domain
In both cases your domain is utoronto.ca, not toronto.edu
Note
- Using vpn or proxy, you pretend that are coming from utoronto.ca.
- Without using proxy if you use browser at coxeter you are coming from toronto.edu.
- Access control distinguishes utoronto.ca from toronto.edu.
- Because of this if you want to allow access from our university network (only) you should include in .htaccess both domains.
- Library proxy seem not support non-standard ports and refuse to connect to some sites.
Victor 13:59, 13 June 2012 (EDT)
