Accessing Math Sci Net from home

Although many journals have online remote access though the University Library via ejournals@cambridge, Math Review is not one of them. The official way (according to the university library) to access MathSciNet/ Mathematical Reviews on the Web is via the university's VPDN service.

This will make your machine appear to the rest of the internet as part of the university network, thus any restricted parts of the internet, such as some online journals for which we have a subscription, will be available, just as if your computer was inside the university.

Virtual Private (Dial-up) Network (VPN)

The university computing service run a VPDN Service, which the rest of the world calls a VPN.

You will need to register with the computing service. You can print out and submit the form http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/forms/formr1.pdf - use the last option on the back page - or use the online form at http://userforms.csx.cam.ac.uk/vpdn.
For many platforms installation isn't particularly simple.
You may have to uninstall (not just disable) the software to connect your laptop to the network at some other universities.
All internet traffic goes through the university network.
Expand You may need to disable your internet service provider web proxy when using a VPN.

Web access via an SSH tunnel to DPMMS

The idea here is that you make an ssh connection to a dpmms machine, and make you web browser talk through this connection; thus the web requests appear to come from the dpmms machine.

On Linux and MacOS run:
ssh -f -N -D9870 username@machine.dpmms.cam.ac.uk
(The -f -N are so that it asks for your password and then runs in the background. The -D9870 tells ssh to use SOCKS on prt 9870.)

Then in firefox Preferences, under Advance/Connection Settings, I choose Automatic proxy configuration URL:
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/conf/proxyALLtun.pac

Switching back to direct connection is just a click; it remembers the host/port even when not in use.

DAMTP have a page Setting up Windows XP to browse web pages over an ssh tunnel which describes how to do this from a Windows machine (it works for Linux and Mac as well as Windows). Please contact me not the DAMTP computer officers if you have problems with this.