That's pretty much what we did here.  I signed us up for an account with
a local ISP, and our testing Mac is for testing how stuff looks in Mac
vs. PC (since 15% of our audience is on Macs) as well as for dialing up
to the ISP to see how stuff works from outside our network.  (Knowing
whether things actually work at all over dialup is also useful -- the
percentage of our audience on dialup Internet connections keeps
shrinking, but it's still not zero.) The ISP is also our registrar for
domain names like sonomalibrary.org and for a while supplied our T1
lines.
 
Genny Engel
Sonoma County Library
[log in to unmask]
707 545-0831 x581
www.sonomalibrary.org
 


>>> [log in to unmask] 09/17/08 10:15AM >>>
Hi Chris,

I'm not sure how your campus is set up, but our IT folks actually have
a separate account with a local ISP just for this purpose; they were
even nice enough to run a line into my office so I can plug in to test
off-campus resources.  Granted, if that doesn't already exists at your
campus, it may cost substantially more than $30/yr, but personally I
find it is a great way to test resources from "off-campus."

Cheers,
Adam Traub
Systems Librarian
St. John Fisher College
3690 East Avenue
Rochester, New York 14618
Phone:  (585)385-8382
Email:  [log in to unmask] 


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Chris Gray
Sent: Wednesday, September 17, 2008 12:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask] 
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Simulating off-campus for testing

There are a number of services we offer that behave differently for 
off-campus users vs. on-campus users (based on IP address) and testing

both behaviors is difficult while sitting on-campus.

I'm looking for an easy, reliable, and secure way to do this.

At the moment I'm doing a free 7-day trial of Anonymizer Anonymous
Surfing 
software ($30/yr), but I want to make sure I'm not missing any good 
alternatives.

Does anyone have any recomnendations or relevant experience?

Chris Gray
Library Systems
University of Waterloo
(hopeful future ex sysadmin firefighter %-)