The administrative sections cover three functional areas of administration in GNAT Box System Software: Administration, Reports and System Activity and are organized in order of the functionís appearance on the menu in the Web interface. A brief explanation of the function is followed by an illustration from the Web interface.
Download Configuration saves the current configuration to a file. Only the configuration data will be transmitted. When opening a configuration copy, you will need the same password as for the active configuration.
The function will prompt the user to find the desired file download location using the BROWSE button. The file will be saved with ì.GBcfgî as the extension. The saved configuration can be used to reload a configuration on a firewall that has been reset to factory defaults or one that was running properly before a network or firewall configuration change.
To retain user-customized configurations before defaulting a section or resetting the firewall to factory settings, use the Download Configuration function to save a copy of the active configuration.
After saving a configuration, go back to the desired filter section, click DEFAULT, then SAVE. This will set up generic filters. Use the previously copied configuration as a template to create filters.
Flush ARP Table clears the cache of addresses resolved by the Address Resolution Protocol and recorded in the ARP table.
ARP is used to dynamically map host addresses to Ethernet addresses and then cache the maps. When an interface requests a map for an IP address not in the cache, ARP queues the message and broadcasts a request for the map on the associated network. If a response is provided, the new map is cached, and any pending message is transmitted. ARP will queue at most one packet while waiting for a response to a map request and only the most recent packet is kept. If the target host does not respond after several requests, the host is considered to be down for a short period (20 seconds), allowing an error to be returned for transmission attempts during this interval. The error ìhost is downî indicates a non-responding destination host, and ìhost unreachableî indicates a non-responding router.
The ARP cache is stored in the system routing table as dynamically-created host routes. These routes time out 20 minutes after being validated; entries are not validated when not in use.
Halt stops the remote GTA Firewall. Since this will terminate your network connection to the web server, your web browser will never receive a reply. It should eventually time out or you can just press the STOP button on your browser. Once halted, the GTA Firewall must be restarted either from the console interface or by performing a power cycle or hardware reset.
The Interfaces dialog allows a network interface on the remote firewall to be enabled, meaning up and ready to send/receive packets, or Disabled, meaning down and not accepting or sending packets. If you are using PPP/PPPoE for your External Network device, please review the PPP section of this guide.
Provides a dialog which will execute the network ping connectivity test by using the Ping ICMP protocol. The ping is executed from the remote GTA Firewall, not from the local workstation.
Since the target IP address can be on any network, the Ping facility is very useful in validating your network connectivity for all network interfaces.
Click the Ping menu item to display the ping form.
Click in the HOST field and enter the fully-qualified host name or IP address to ping. Enter the IP address in dotted decimal notation.
Click the SUBMIT button to start the ping. The process will attempt to send five ping ICMP packets to the target IP address.
Reboot restarts the remote GTA Firewall. Since this action will terminate the Web interfaceís network connection to the web server, your web browser will never receive a reply. The connection will eventually time out, or you can click the STOP button on your web browser.
Set Date/Time provides a means to set the date and time values used on the GTA Firewall. The date should be entered in the form of century, year, month and day (ccyy-mm-dd). GTA recommends setting the time zone, either to the local time zone or UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
Firewalls report events to the log and to GB-Commander in UTC. When displaying the time, GB-Commander and GTA Reporting Suite convert stored UTC data to the user machineís local time zone. This is relevant when GTA Reporting Suite and GB-Commander reports are compared across time zones.
UTC was formerly known as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Other terms used to refer to UTC are Zulu time, universal time and world time. Time is expressed in 24-hour notation in GNAT Box System Software, e.g., 1:00 a.m. is 01:00, and 4:00 p.m. is 16:00.
To set the time zone, click SET TIMEZONE. Select a region, country and time zone which observe the same time as your locality. Click OK to apply your selection. Save your changes, then reboot the system.
Trace Route executes a network trace to a designated IP address or host name. The trace route is executed from the GTA Firewall.
Trace Route is another method to test network connectivity. To determine whether a route to an Internet host is viable, Trace Route launches UDP probe packets with a short TTL (Time to Live), and then listens for an ICMP ìtime exceededî reply from a gateway.
When the trace is active, three probes are launched for each gateway, with the output showing the TTL, address of the gateway, and round trip time of each probe. The Trace Route form will accept either a fully qualified host name (if DNS has been enabled on the GTA Firewall system), or an IP address.
This item will allow you to upload a previously saved GNAT Box System Software configuration file. Enter the name of the configuration file to upload, or use the BROWSE button to find the file on your local workstation.The file will have the extension ì.GBcfg.î Click SUBMIT to upload the configuration file to the GTA Firewall. See Download/Save Configuration.
The Upload Runtime function is used to upgrade a firewall to a new version or reinstall a previous version. (Upload/Update Runtime is not available on GB-Light.)
The GNAT Box System Software has two distinct parts: the runtime operating system and the configuration data. The Upload Runtime function allows the administrator to upload and install a GNAT Box System Software runtime system image on a GTA Firewall. When this item is selected, a dialog prompts you to browse for GNAT Box System Software runtime files. These files have a file extension of ì.rtmî. Select OPEN to upload the runtime file, then confirm that you want to update the runtime on the GTA Firewall. The system will validate the runtime file. If it is valid, the system will install it.
¨ Notes
Optional features or features that do not apply to a user interface will display in the menu only if they have been activated and are part of that interface; e.g., the Upload Runtime feature is only for flash-based systems.
Always reboot your system after changing the time zone.
GTA recommends using GBAdmin to open a configuration file on the running GTA Firewall.
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