For enterprise LAN management, the workload on network administrators is constantly increasing. Strengthening LAN security requires making full use of network equipment. As for the commonly used router functions, have administrators truly realized their full value? Below, we will introduce the functions of routers.
Traffic Management. Through System Status 鈥?gt; Port Statistics, you can view the byte counts of input and output for each LAN port, WAN port, and DMZ port, the number of broadcast packets, and the average traffic rate in each direction, represented in BPS and PPS respectively. The WAN port input corresponds to download traffic. When internal network traffic is relatively normal, the LAN port output should be close to the WAN port input, and the LAN port input should be close to the WAN port output.
Statistics Function. We can use the user statistics table in internet monitoring to count how many devices are currently online. The user statistics table provides the IP address and MAC mapping for each user machine connected to the HiPER device, as well as the number of packets sent and received since the user came online. If a particular user has an extremely large number of downloaded packets, that user may be downloading heavily or engaging in attack behavior, which alerts the administrator.
Troubleshooting Function. When network traffic is very high, there are many collisions in the Ethernet, or attacks similar to the Blaster worm occur, it used to require expensive packet-capturing software or hardware to find the fault. Such troubleshooting tools are costly, and in networks using switches, operations must be performed through the switch’s mirroring port. Since many companies use more than one switch, this is very inconvenient.
Now, on the HiPER router serving as the network gateway, we can view each user’s behavior through the management interface鈥攆or example, checking whether a user is using WWW services or chatting via MSN. We can also view abnormal behaviors, such as a machine continuously sending out broadcast packets or packets with multicast destination addresses.
Attack Warning Function. Once a user on the local area network uses multi-threaded software or initiates an attack, you can see the number of connections they occupy on the HiPER device, including total connections and current connections.
If failed connection counts appear, it means the NAT connections required by the entire network have exceeded the system’s connection capacity. There are two possible causes: first, there