Differing Internal and External Access to Moodle

Differing Internal and External Access to Moodle

by Brett Hamelin -
Number of replies: 3

Our company is looking to set-up a single LMS to replace the multiple ones we have running right now (mostly different versions of ATutor).

One issue we face, is that most of the content should not be accessible outside of the internal network; ie. Corporate information should not be accessed from home. Our department however handles educational material that must be accesssible from home.

Is there a way to do this with Moodle? Ie. can I display courses based on the current IP address of the student?

Brett

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In reply to Brett Hamelin

Re: Differing Internal and External Access to Moodle

by Bryan Williams -

While technically possible, this in reality isn't practical. Many users at home are accessing the internet through a provider that dynamically assigns an IP address; that is, it changes. With those users having a static IP address the problem is a bit easier to solve but would still be an onerous task if you have lots of users. One option would be to contract with an authorized provider of Moodle services for hosting and then place the service into a trusted relationship with HQ servers for various web services. There may likely be other ways to do this but this is how some people are solving the same problem.

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In reply to Brett Hamelin

Re: Differing Internal and External Access to Moodle

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
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The strategy of running multiple instances, of the same product or different products, makes sense in your case. Depending on the security level of the instance, it will be hosted in a different place, physically and netwise, with differing security measures.
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In reply to Brett Hamelin

Re: Differing Internal and External Access to Moodle

by Howard Miller -
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As long as you could identify users on the basis of...

Group A - everybody in subnet (say) 192.168.0.0/24
Group B - everybody else

then it would be *possible* to modify the course rendering code to restrict certain courses to certain groups. However, it's nasty.

It sounds like a step back is required. What happens if someone comes into work, downloads the (restricted) material onto a memory stick and then takes it home? All your effort has been for nothing!!

Alternatively, have you considered restricting the whole Moodle site and implementing a VPN. Home users need to authenticate against the VPN to access the site.
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