Authentication is used in WinGate to control user access to the WinGate services, and by extension the Internet. Policies can be created to control users on a user or group basis but if you want to differentiate between users you must use some form of authentication.

For more information regarding creation of policies in WinGate please see this knowledge base article.

If no authentication is used then the WinGate server has no way of discovering which user is connecting to it, so all user connections will show up as coming from the GUEST account.

There are a few authentication options available in WinGate:

• User Assumption - by IP address, or if you are using the WinGate DHCP service, by machine name.

• Basic Authentication

• Java Authentication

• NTLM Authentication

There are three levels of Authentication in WinGate and the above Authentication options fit into these levels of Authentication.

User may be Unknown:
This is the Unauthenticated level, all users will be seen to be GUEST and no Authentication is required to connect to the WinGate services. Policies can still be set to control access to the Internet, these policies will affect all users.



User may be Assumed:
An intermediate level of Authentication that does not provide a high level of security. Used with either Basic Authentication or Assumptions. It can be convenient to set up Assumptions by IP address, this allows you to create policies based on the machine that the user is connecting from and does not require any input from the user. Using Assumptions grants access rights on a per machine basis so any user accessing WinGate from a particular machine can be assumed to be a specified user.



For more information regarding the Assumed level of Authentication in WinGate please see this knowledge base article.

User must be Authenticated;
The highest level of security, uses either the Java login through the WWW proxy, NTLM authentication if using the Operating System database, or the GateKeeper login method to authenticate users.



For more information regarding the Authenticated level of Authentication in WinGate please see this knowledge base article.

If you have any questions about this article please contact Qbik Support.