Tunneling to the Other Side

Another option for legacy access is by SSL VPN tunneling. The remote access methods described above meet the access needs of most remote users. Some users, however, may require client/server application access. In this case, a local client is installed on the user's PC and a remote server provides the services. Examples include CRM, e-mail, and custom applications. This can be provided by means of SSL tunneling technology as described in Chapter 3.

Tunneling Techniques

One example of this tunneling is implemented by the SSL VPN device using a built-in screen-scraping protocol that splits the emulation and display processing so that only the application's display is sent to the remote user's web browser.

In another technique, the SSL VPN will enable a small Java applet to download to the user's browser. The user will connect to the SSL VPN via a browser and authenticate. The applet will be initialized, and then the local 'client' can access the targeted server via...