Profiles can be used as a simple time of day and day of week control, or can be used as a master switch allowing complete sets of routes and filters to be turned on or off manually. They can also be used to monitor a specific IP address via a specific interface - this allows automatic fall back plans to be controlled based on a failed link (e.g. ADSL falling back to ISDN).
A number of time profiles can be created :-
| Security | Who can view/edit this profile |
| Name | Name the profile |
| Normal timed | The profile is active during the hours indicated |
| Permanent enabled | The profile is always active |
| Permanent disabled | The profile is never active |
| Ping scanning | The profile is active while a host is responding |
| Alert affected |
The alert LED can be set to come on if the profile
is active or not |
| Ping | Define the address interface on which to send the ping. Any means routing rules are followed |
| Gateway | Define the gateway/router via which the ping is sent. Blank means routing rules are followed |
| TTL | The time to live for the ping - how many hops it will go before giving
up. Can be useful to ensure the ping is being monitored via a specific route. |
| Re-route |
This causes traffic in progress to be re-routed if
this profile changes |
| Time grid | Defines what hours the profile is active (or when to ping) Various shortcuts apply when saving, edit again to see what they have done. |
| As above | Shortcut - used to copy the whole of the previous day |
| 9 to 5 | Shortcut - sets hours from 9am to 4pm (i.e. time 9-5) |
| Clr | Shortcut - clears the day |
| 24 | Shortcut - sets all hours in the day |
Note that the current time is highlighted. If the time is not set the entire time grid grid is not shown.
Profiles can be for various different purposes, and can obviously overlap. Each setting is attached to just one profile. There are 4 pre-defined profiles in addition to the ones that can be set manually - these include 24/7 (always on), 9-5 M-F (9am to 5pm Monday-Friday), 2am Sun (2am to 3am on Sunday), and OFF (never active).
The time must be set which requires a time server and basic routing to be configured. Once this is done profiles can be used based on time and day. If not set then profiles can still be used but only as a master switch or ping scanning. After power on until the time is set the profiles time setting is frozen at the state when the power went off.
Each of the settings that can use a profile show the profile in green for currently active and red for inactive.
If there is no response to a ping, then a further 7 pings are done at about 1 second intervals. Only on all 8 failing to respond is the ping considreded a failure. Once failed the ping is once every 20 seconds until there is a reply.
As the ping mode may be used to control routing (e.g. ISDN backup to ADSL), it is necessary for the pinging to continue after the failure (again at 10 second intervals) but to do so via the broken route (e.g. still down the ADSL line). For this to work you can select the interface and gateway for the pings - which bypass normal routing rules.
Obviously many difference aspects of the FireBrick® could be controlled using such a profile (e.g. routing, speed limiting, filters) as these may need to be different when using a slow backup link such as ISDN.