Our corporate laptops are restricted to only allow internet access through our proxy (connection profile in Internet Explorer pushed through a GPO). On a remote/3rd party connection this is allowed by creating a VPN back to the corporate network (Cisco VPN Client -> Cisco ASA), at which point the proxy is available and we route all internet traffic through that.
We have recently had the question raised by one of our users who was attempting to use a Wireless connection on a train. The train company requires that the user fills in a form hosted on their own network.
The problem we had was that the user wasn't able to get to the train companies internal page as the proxy wasn't available. They couldn't connect the VPN as they hadn't completed the train companies logon page.
We considered that we could specify this page in the 'bypass proxy for this address...' which would allow a connection to only that page, this was rejected as we would then have to start adding every train company, hotel, public hotspot that works in this way (which must be a list of thousands)
Second suggestion was to allow connections to any local network range (10.* or 192.*) but the implications with regards to security seemed to dangerous. Plus the page offered up by the train company would be http://virginrailwifisignup
page and not http://192.168.1.1
At which point we were stumped. The now familiar cry went up in the office "we can't be the only ones who have had this problem" but I haven't been able to find anyone who has mentioned a useful solution.
So I ask you, Server Fault, how have you managed this?
Worth noting, we provide all our mobile users with 3G connections for when they are out and about, they VPN back in over that but its flaky as hell on a train.