We are utilizing a device from St. Bernard (IPrism) which is set up to use the domain logon credentials of our Win2k/XP machines to authenticate and filter web traffic accordingly.

If it can't detect the credentials, it prompts us with a user, password, and domain authentication box...which is what our BlackBerry users see occasionally when they need to use the BlackBerry browser - which I expected.

However, I and some others noticed that these authentications are much more infrequent than what our current timeout is set for (240 minutes).

I've only had to authenticate a few times here and there, and I have a sneaky suspicion that when I authenticate through the IPrism from my browser, that unlocks access for anyone else who might be trying to surf later on, since the traffic is probably originating from the same IP.

This may not be a huge issue, though - as I may be able to set up our IPrism to prompt every time someone wants to use the Internet from the originating IP address (in this case, the BES server).

Can someone tell me how the Internet traffic works with Mobile Data Services? Am I right in assuming that any Internet information viewed by the BlackBerries are going through a single IP address from the BlackBerry server?

Have you heard of a similar issue as this from other folks?

I don't know how much this helps but, yes, MDS uses the BES server to go to the internet so I think your assumption is right. The same IP is being used for all users. Now on the mds setup you can tell it to use a spcecific proxy, the Iprism for you, and then I believe it will go to that and look for credentials. There is some authentication settings in MDS as well that might help in this regard, just not to sure what each does.

Yikes, that's what I thought...

No need for the proxy setting, though. Fortunately, the IPrism has an IP access list, so I can generate a rule based upon the IP it receives for traffic...or will I just have the same problem if I do this? Hmmm.

This will make a few users mad...

As a side note, we are still on version 3.6 BES - does 4.0 let me get a bit more granular with the MDS settings?

Thanks for your input, but the way!
Rob

We use that exact proxy here and it works fine through MDS, BES 4 for Exchange.