If you take a look under the files section you will see a new entry for wgLogin.zip. 

If you use the Watchguard Firebox line of firewalls, then you probably know that while they are capable and affordable, there are certain tradeoffs you just have to live with.  Most of these tradeoffs are not necessarily design flaws, but rather situations where you decide to chose Security over Convenience.

In our environment, we chose to limit access to the internet by default.  Only purely business-related traffic is allowed out – all other use requires a valid login to the Firebox, which has a variety of different HTTP proxy services setup to establish access profiles for different user groups. 

For example: Our marketing department can access all sorts of social networking sites, but the rest of the company cannot.

Anyhow, back to the wgLogin client.  To authenticate to the Firebox you need to browse to the Firebox IP on port 4100 and launch a java applet.  That applet will let you enter your AD username and password, and if you are so authorized you will then have access to the internet.  The catch is that your access is terminated if you close the java applet in any way – navigating to another page or closing the browser.  Our user community hated the firewall because they would wind up logging in over and over again all day.

wgLogin gets around this hosting the java applet in a small system tray application.  This makes it much more difficult to accidently disconnect yourself from the internet.

A few notes:

• No warranty what-so-ever with this application
• PC will need Java installed
• wgLogin will attempt to resolve the IP of the firebox my looking up FIREWALL.  Either add a DNS entry or a HOSTS table entry to associate FIREWALL with the correct IP
• The globe tray icon will ‘light up’ if it can see the internet, otherwise it will be ‘dim’
• The app will auto-minimize if it can see the internet
• The app is summoned with a single-click

Let me know if you have trouble…