Frequently Asked Questions

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Do I have to purchase The Butler Box to use Libproxy software?

No--Libproxy, created by Richard Goerwitz, is freely available here: http://www.goerwitz.com/software/libproxy/ The Butler Box uses Libproxy as part of its system, but the Libproxy software copyright is owned by Mr. Goerwitz, and is used with permission by The Butler Box.

Is it permissible to proxy any electronic resource?

It depends. You are responsible for compliance with the licenses that apply to each of your electronic resources. While it is technically possible to proxy many resources, some vendors require a separate license and/or fee to offer remote access to their resources. When in doubt, always contact the vendor who provides the resource.

What is https/SSL?

The https:// string at the start of a URL indicates that the connection is being made through SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol originally developed by Netscape Communications Corporation. An icon on the status bar of your web browser may also be used to indicate the presence of an SSL connection. SSL is a method for hiding the information exchanged by a web browser and a web server by encrypting it. Normal (unencrypted) web browsing offers no privacy--the sophisticated snoop can monitor the information sent between a web browser and server. SSL was designed to provide security for web data. You may have noticed SSL in use at web sites offering online credit card transactions. SSL is also quite useful for login pages (such as the login page your users see when accessing resources available via your Butler Box). The Butler Box incorporates SSL to provide security for your users and your resources.

The Butler Box offers two security options. What is the difference between the "self-signed" certificate option and the "CA-signed" certificate option?

SSL provides a secure communication method for sensitive data, but that is only one part of the security picture. To ensure the web browser that the web server with which you are communicating is who you think it is, a digital certificate is used. This certificate can be used to guarantee that a website is associated with a particular company or organization. A certificate can be issued by a Certificate Authority (or "CA"), or it can be generated by the system administrator of the web server (called a "self-signed" certificate).
A CA-signed certificate provides two important capabilities for your users:

• Browsers will (usually) automatically recognize the certificate and allow a secure connection to be made, without prompting the user.
• When a CA issues a signed certificate, they are guaranteeing the identity of the organization that is providing the Web pages to the browser.

CA-signed certicates are often seen in online storefronts where online purchasing is available. The disadvantage to CA-signed certificates is cost; CA certificates, particularly the type needed to certify multiple hosts (called "wild card" certificates), can be expensive. A wild card certificate allows you to use The Butler Box to proxy secure (https) electronic resources.
A self-signed certificate costs essentially nothing, but it does have disadvantages.

• Anyone can generate a self-signed certificate; you cannot be sure of the identity of a web site using a self-signed certificate.
• Self-signed certificates will not be automatically accepted by a user's browser — the user will be asked by the browser if they want to accept the certificate and create the secure connection and view the page.

The Butler Box offers both levels of certificate. The self-signed certificate offers lower cost, but your users will have one additional step to take in order to access proxied resources. The CA-signed certificate option is more transparent to your users.
You can order your Butler Box with the self-signed certificate option, and switch to the CA-signed certificate option at a later time, if you choose. See Pricing for more information.

Can I have no SSL certificate at all?

One of the unique advantages The Butler Box offers is security. We feel that removing this option would seriously diminish this important advantage, so a "no security" option is not available. Note that the self-signed security certificate option does not incur any additional cost--see Pricing for more information.

How is data backed up, and what is backed up?

Your data is backed up to a USB flash memory device, and you can also use the administrative web interface to send the backup file to any email address you choose. Your electronic resources, your user database (if using the local user option), and your configuration files (the IP address of your machine, the host name of your machine, and other network settings) are saved every time you perform a backup.

I have another data backup method I would like to use with The Butler Box (e.g. - a tape backup device that backs up data from multiple servers)--is that possible?

Yes--contact us for more information and a quote for setting up a custom backup solution.

My users are depending on remote access to our electronic resources. What happens in the event of a hardware failure?

Should your Butler Box ever suffer a major hardware failure, all you have to do is contact us to have a new Butler Box sent to you via overnight shipping. Simply plug it in, connect it to your network, and restore your data using the USB flash memory device. You're back in business!

Can The Butler Box proxy resources that use username/password validation?

Yes. Libproxy has a robust method of handling resources that are validated by username/password rather than by IP validation. Of course, validation methods vary widely from vendor to vendor, so not every resource can be proxied, but our Technical Support is happy to help you address any issues you encounter when adding your electronic resources to your Butler Box.

What is "auto-proxying" or "domain proxying"?

This is a powerful feature of the Libproxy software. Some vendors' resources exist on multiple web servers. For example, you might access the XYZ database, which offers 500 full-text e-journals, at http://login.example.com. As soon as you log in, you are then passed to the first available content server. Today, it might be http://host1.example.com, tomorrow, or even an hour later, you might access the same content at http://host4.example.com or even http://host20.example.com. You don't have to enter each one of these sources manually, thanks to the power of auto-proxying. You can simply instruct The Butler Box to automatically add any new host it encounters in a domain to its list of proxied resources. For example: if you set autoproxying for our fictitious "example.com" domain, http://host17.example.com--which you did not specifically enter into the list of proxied items--will be automatically added to The Butler Box the first time a user requests it.