Most academic journal repositories grant institutional access based on IP address blocks. Some institutions keep this narrow and force you to use an HTTP proxy

Most academic journal repositories grant institutional access based on IP address blocks. Some institutions keep this narrow and force you to use an HTTP proxy, which gives them the ability to put additional institutional-level authentication in place. The upside is that you can access the journals from off-network, the downside is using the proxy can be a major pain. Other networks, e.g. MIT, are permissive with the IP restriction and don't mandate the use of one centralized proxy as long as you are on-network. I suppose that may change after this case.