Re: more VPN thoughts

[Tom Parker <palfrey tevp net>]

Colin Walters wrote:
> So how do we answer that?  One approach might be to define it as

As I'm seeing it there's two different problems
1) You want access to services that may be not available from your 
current location and connection (random servers in some corporate or 
otherwise location), and if you can't get to them, then VPN or 
equivalent should be switched on to tunnel through to where the useful 
things are.

2) You're on a limited-access wireless (wired? never seen this, but 
theoretically possible for public "plug in a laptop" scenarios) network 
bouncing HTTP requests to a "switch on the VPN"/"do other auth things" 
page. Which ideally we should detect/notify without the user having to 
realise that's why their IMAP requests aren't getting through.

1) appears to be what you're describing, but 2) is also a common 
situation for when you're out and about and using wireless networks, and 
I think the two are related.

Tom