Determining whether a device is inside a network

One or more computer hardware storage media having stored thereon multiple instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing device, cause the one or more processors to:

• send an unencrypted request to a gateway of a resource access manager of a particular network but encrypt other requests sent to the gateway to access other devices in the particular network, wherein the request is an unencrypted request regardless of whether the computing device is inside the particular network or outside the particular network, and wherein the unencrypted request is an unencrypted request to a domain name system (DNS) or a lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) port of the resource access manager;
• if both a response is received from the resource access manager and the computing device is assigned a network address within a desired range of network addresses, then determine that the resource access manager can be accessed and that the computing device is inside the particular network, otherwise determine that the resource access manager cannot be accessed and that the computing device is outside the particular network;
• and
• repeat sending the unencrypted request to the resource access manager at particular intervals.

A method in a computing device, the method comprising:

• obtaining a network address assigned to the computing device;
• checking whether the network address is within a range of corporate network addresses of a corporate network;
• if the network address is not within the range of corporate network addresses, then determining that the computing device is outside the corporate network;
• and
• if the network address is within the range of corporate network addresses, then:
• checking whether a domain controller for the corporate network can be accessed by sending a request to the domain controller via a gateway of the corporate network, wherein the request is an unencrypted request regardless of whether the computing device is inside the particular network or outside the particular network, wherein the unencrypted request is an unencrypted request to a domain name system (DNS) or a lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) port of the domain controller, and the computing device sends other requests to the gateway as encrypted requests;
• checking whether a response to the request is received from the domain controller;
• determining that the domain controller can be accessed if the response to the request is received from the domain controller, otherwise determining that the domain controller cannot be accessed;
• and
• determining, after checking whether the domain controller for the corporate network can be accessed, that the computing device is inside the corporate network if the domain controller can be accessed, otherwise determining that the computing device is outside the corporate network;
• and
• repeating the obtaining and the checking whether the network address is not within the range of corporate network addresses at particular intervals.