When you are connecting to the department network from home, or accessing via wireless connection, you have a limited access to their resources. The department recommends the use of the VPN service, but it's not a very good solution for me, as the other VPN software I need to use for other purpose seems to conflict with the university VPN client.
Below is a brief description of how to access a number of department resources without using the department VPN client. All content is for Windows environmentso far, although some techniques are also useful in other platforms. Note that all methods are based on the use of SSH port-forwarding. Although this is a very powerful approach, it doesn't completely replace what the VPN software does. In particular, it doesn't automatically encrypt all the communications for the university network.