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I have a weird situation at work I'm trying to fix....

I work as a web developer at a large corporation with the usual over the top security on its networks.

To be absolutely clear, I'm not trying to circumvent any restrictions in any way...I actually have basically unrestricted privileges for my role (which is awesome, but necessary since I have to run all sorts of crazy things for testing software) when logged into our "mobile" network (it's not actually mobile in any normal sense of that word, just a dumb name they use). Weirdly, my problem is the exact opposite: I need to connect to a more restrictive network!

Recently, I've begun work with a new piece of software another department purchased, IBM Unica. This is apparently configured to restrict access to only users connected to our "leaper" network (that's our "all employees" network, I have no idea why it's named leaper). The sites will not respond if I am logged into "mobile", so I have to switch. The other department controls all of this, I cannot make any changes to make it mobile-accessible.

Now, leaper is obviously way more restricted. I can't do 90% of my job when connected to that network, so I can't just switch over full-time. I only need this network for whenever I'm working in Unica, which is conveniently also restricted to Internet Explorer only, because reasons (there are a couple other really minor HR related pages that have to use leaper and IE, but until adding Unica to my plate switching to check payroll wasn't that inconvenient).

Here's what I want to accomplish: Leave myself connected to mobile by default, as I always have been. If I load something in IE (and if we get this to work, I'd like to add stuff like MediaBin that I use rarely but also requires leaper), it automatically switches to leaper. If I go back to Chrome and load a page, it should then know to use mobile.

Basically, I need to make this switch hundreds of times a day. In a typical day I now have Unica open in one monitor, chat clients and skype and junk in another, and a browser open in my third. I can't keep manually changing my network selection every time I switch windows...not only is that infuriatingly tedious, but I'd lose 20% of my productivity adding in that step.

So far I've found things like Proxy Switcher, but they only seem to do the opposite from I need (detecting networks and changing program behavior, I need to detect programs and change networks).

In my network settings, I do see 3 separate wireless adapters listed (2 Virtual WiFi MiniPort Adapters). Is it possible to bind these adapters to different wifi SSIDs? Is there any existing software that is able to detect program behavior and switch accordingly?

Perhaps proxying is the way to go? Is there any way to set up the leaper network AS a proxy, of sorts...i.e. set up a rule that all traffic from a program be sent to that router's IP?

Thanks in advance. I could probably solve this in 5 minutes in Linux, but sadly I have no control over my chosen operating system here :(

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  • How much RAM does this machine have? You could make a VM. And depending how locked down leaper TRULY is, you could put a "rogue" machine on mobile acting as a VPN server ;), then configure a static route to Univa via VPN configuration. With all other traffic going over the VPN.
    – Arthur Kay
    May 26, 2015 at 16:21
  • Hmmm, that might work actually. Only 16 gigs of RAM, but I've had no problem with running like 4 VMs side by side on here. I could just set one up in the background that bridges its virtual adapter to my ethernet port (which only connects to leaper and I currently have it disabled since it overrides the wifi), then use the VM as a proxy to route all traffic from chosen programs onto leaper while the rest of the traffic will go through the wifi adapter to mobile.
    – baronvonvaderham
    May 26, 2015 at 16:31
  • Ahhh. Slave the ehternet port to the VM and then bridging the adapters. Perfect. Didn't even think of that. Go for it.
    – Arthur Kay
    May 26, 2015 at 17:57
  • Exactly. Create a virtual proxy tied to leaper that doesn't interfere with the primary adapter. Got a meeting, but I'll try this later and report back.
    – baronvonvaderham
    May 26, 2015 at 17:59
  • The other less attractive alternative is to simply use the VM to run Unica. Depending on your virtualization software this could let you drag it out as a stand-alone window. With tools installed on the VM, you should be sharing clipboards with it.
    – Arthur Kay
    May 26, 2015 at 18:17

1 Answer 1

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Simple solution: I forgot I have an ethernet port I had disabled at my disposal which defaults to the correct network. Windows knows to swap between them as needed.

Remaining bug: This breaks some sites that can't handle the swap and time out on a response. JIRA, for example.

Complicated solution I'm using instead: I set up a virtual machine running in the background on which I'm running a proxy server. I slaved the ethernet port to this machine only so my "outer" machine doesn't try to use it. I then configured a proxy switcher that routes all traffic from specific programs to the proxy which successfully handles all traffic through the network I need via ethernet. This catches 99% of cases where I need to swap networks. The remaining 1% are infrequent enough to ignore.

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