SRA Gateway

NOTE Session stickiness is not required in front of a Gateway (unless you are using Netlet), however performance is improved with session stickiness. On the other hand, session stickiness to the Portal Server instances is enforced by SRA.

Proxy Configuration

The Gateway uses proxies that are specified in its profile to retrieve contents from various web servers within the intranet and extranet. You can dedicate proxies for hosts and DNS subdomains and domains. Depending on the proxy configuration, the Gateway uses the appropriate proxy to fetch the required contents. If the proxy requires authentication, the proxy name is stored as part of the gateway profile, that the Gateway uses automatically, when connecting to the proxy.

Gateway and HTTP Basic Authentication

The Gateway supports basic authentication, that is, prompting for a user ID and password but not protecting those credentials during transmission from the user’s computer to the site’s web server. Such protection usually requires the establishment of a secure HTTP connection, typically through the use of SSL.

If a web server requires basic authentication the client prompts for user name and password and sends the information back to the requesting server. With the Gateway enabled for HTTP basic authentication, it captures the user name and password information and stores a copy in the user’s profile in the Access Manager for subsequent authentications and login attempts. The original data is passed by the Gateway to the destination web server for basic authentication. The web server performs the validation of the user name and password.

The Gateway also enables fine control of denying and allowing this capability on an individual host basis.

Gateway and SSL Support

The Gateway supports both SSL v2 and SSL v3 encryption while running in HTTPS mode. You can use the Access Manager administration console to enable or disable specific encryption. The Gateway also supports Transport Layer Security (TLS).

SSL v3 has two authentication modes:

Chapter 2 Portal Server Secure Remote Access Architecture 39

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Sun Microsystems 2005Q1 manual Proxy Configuration, Gateway and Http Basic Authentication, Gateway and SSL Support