Tech Forum

Went to TM today to check on something else and found I now have a graph that shows peak bandwidth used and DHCP assignments for about the last 60 days.

Whoo-hoo!

This is a great feature... it also includes some peak usage bandwidth, very helpful to see if the speeds you have are meeting the needs of the members.

I've been playing with this over the past few days. Pretty clever! If you hover over the graph, you will see the point data pop-up. By clicking on the header names ("DHCP Available", "DHCP Lease", or "BW Usage"), you can toggle their associated plots on and off.

Not sure how long this has been available, but under Tools --> History, it will show a log of who restarted the firewall and when. Not sure if other things will show up in this log, but that's all mine has so far.

Very interesting. I can see the typical Sunday peaks, but at our stake center there are suspicious weekday high bandwidth and DHCP usages that coincide with Youth Conference and EFY-at-home... Looks like the youth share the password.

Not sure why that would be considered suspicious... the password is freely available on the Internet, from family members in other stakes. The tool will help us identify anyone who is hijacking the signal (so-to-speak).

JohnShaw wrote:Not sure why that would be considered suspicious...

I guess I meant it was suspicious until I looked at the stake calendar. Certainly I know the password is "out there". I suppose we really should be looking for weekdays that still use bandwidth (from "neighbors", perhaps). Not that there would be anything we could do about it if it was detected...

mfmohlma wrote:Not that there would be anything we could do about it if it was detected...

You could put everything though a switch and put it on a timer.

russellhltn wrote:You could put everything though a switch and put it on a timer.

Really? Seems to me that would potentially create a lot more problems than it solved. There's no way to predict when the building might be occupied or a clerk come in after hours to do some work.

mfmohlma wrote:Not that there would be anything we could do about it if it was detected...

Sure there is. If you suspect neighbors are free-riding on the church's WiFi, contact CHQ. They have a LOT more statistics available than the tiny bit we see on TM regarding which devices were connected to your WiFi and when. I wouldn't doubt they can even pull up a particular device's browsing history. If there's an issue, I'm sure they can handle it.

Mikerowaved wrote:

russellhltn wrote:You could put everything though a switch and put it on a timer.

Really? Seems to me that would potentially create a lot more problems than it solved. There's no way to predict when the building might be occupied or a clerk come in after hours to do some work.

Oh, I think I can predict the situation between 11PM and 5AM. <grin>

I'll cross that bridge when I get to it, but I think it should be do-able. Keep in mind there's nothing that says Internet has to be available for all activities, so if it's not there for the youth dance, I don't think it will be a disaster.

My goal would be to be unavailable during hours the neighbors want to browse but the building isn't likely to be in use. If the connection is unreliable, hopefully they'll find someone else's signal to poach.

Glad to see people are enjoying some of the new features including the graph. This data can be quite valuable and reveal quite a bit of information. As far as trying to prevent the "neighbors" from hi-jacking, I wouldn't suggest turning your firewall off at certain times. As we are monitoring your firewalls from HQ and may need to apply patches or updates to them (usually during off-peak times) it is helpful that they remain on and accessible.

If enrolled in the "Phone Home" program, your firewall will report back to HQ every 10 minutes with a tiny packet of information. It is the "Phone Home" data that we use to create the graph and provide usage peaks, etc.

One thing I noticed which we will be addressing in the next update is that the countdown timer for usage statistics is a little too strict. As soon as it hits the 10 minute mark it expects the new data to be available. We need to add a bit of "slush" in there before it checks again....like 30 seconds. It is too quick to state "This firewall has not reported in recently...please contact..." If you hit refresh, it will pick up the new information. Please disregard those short term messages until we get the "slush" added.

Thanks,
Tony Spencer