> I've been reading Andrew Young's paper on JANET Authorisation and Encryption
> services (http://www.niss.ac.uk/education/jisc/acn/authent/young.html). I can
> see this service adding a much-needed layer of security for those operating
> eLib services (such as SCOPE).
I'm glad you think the paper is aiming at the right target!
> 1.Can a user (student) use this service from a computer outwith academia (via
> commercial ISP?)?
Yes. Secured versions of any user agents involved would work with any Winsock
compatible internet access suite (this means pretty much anything, even
Compuserve). As discussed in section 5, unmodified versions of user agents
would still be able to use some facilities. Use from home and while
travelling abroad was definitely something I was thinking of.
> 2.If the service is open to the type acces mentioned in 1 above, can it be
> extended to allow certified access from outwith the UK? This would be very
> useful in delivering materials for distance learning.
Extending the authentication server mechanism outside *.ac.uk would be
possible, though would require a lot of thought and planning. As implied by
1 above, it does not matter where in the world a user is located. Therefore,
something equivalent to what you are thinking of may be possible anyway.
> 3. Will a WWW compliant system be up and running (completely) soon or is there a
> bit of pilot testing to do?
My document did not include consideration of WWW (there was a parallel study
by Andrew Cormack that considered that - I presume it's been published in the
same way as my paper). What I described is just a concept, and even pilot
testing is a distant light (others can give a better answer to this than I
can)
Andrew
P.S. please cc me on any followup as I don't subscribe to this list
--
Andrew Young Work: [log in to unmask]
Information Technology Institute Tel: 0161 745 5257
University of Salford Home: [log in to unmask]
Manchester M5 4WT URL: http://www.demon.co.uk/andy
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