Overview¶

The Dashboard Overview is the default landing page, the one that is displayed upon every login. It encompasses several boxes (“plugins”) organised in two columns that provide a complete overview of the running system and of its status and health. The top of each box reports the name of the box, and a click on the reload icon on the right-hand side of the title bar immediately reloads the information in the plugin, which are nonetheless updated at regular intervals.

The available plugins and the information they display are described next.

General Information Plugin

It shows several information about the installed system. It usually presents the hostname and domainname of the Connect Switchboard in the title.

Hostname: The hostname and domain name
Appliance: The appliance type.
Version: The version of the firmware.
Uptime: The time since the last reboot.
Update status: A message depending on the Connect Switchboard status:
- UP TO DATE. No updates are available.
- UPDATE REQUIRED. New packages can be installed: A click on the message leads to the Updates page where it is possible to review the list of new packages.
- PLEASE REGISTER. The system has not yet been registered to Endian Network: Go to the Endian Network page on the Connect Switchboard (System ‣ Endian Network), in which to compile a form to complete the registration.
Maintenance: The remaining days of validity of the maintenance support, or the NOT REGISTERED string.
Support access: Whether the support team can access the Connect Switchboard or not. In the former case, it is also shown the date until the access is granted.

Hint

Support access can be enabled or disabled under System ‣ Support.

Network Interfaces Plugin

It shows information about the network interfaces of the firewall and the traffic. The upper part of this plugin shows several data about the network interfaces of the Connect Switchboard: Their name, type, link (Up if a connection is established, Down otherwise), and the In- and Outgoing traffic. The latter two data are updated in real-time.

When ticking the checkbox near the device name, that device is shown in the graphs underneath. The devices’ name is coloured according to the zone they serve.

The lower part of the plugin contains two charts: The first one shows the incoming traffic, while the second one the outgoing traffic.

The traffic of each interface is coloured according to the zone it belongs to; Bridges built on one device are shown in the same colour as the device. and different interfaces belonging to the same bridge are shown with a different shade of colour.

Like the traffic data in the upper part, both charts are updated in real-time.

Hint

Up to six interfaces can be selected and shown in the charts.

Services Plugin

This plugin carries information about events recorded by some of the services installed on the Connect Switchboard and their actual status. Active services are marked with the RUNNING message, with the STOPPED otherwise. For each running service is shown a summary of the tasks accomplished during the last hour and the last day.

Hence, if some number in the summaries sounds strange or not common compared to the normal activities (e.g., the IDS has detected some attack), the logs can be controlled to search for some useful message that has been recorded.

The only supported service on the Connect Switchboard is:

Intrusion Detection: The number of attacks logged by snort.

Hint

Inactive services are marked with the STOPPED message.

Memory Plugin

This plugin shows information about the memory usage of the Connect Switchboard, taken from the free -m Linux command’s output. It features the usage of Total, Free, Cached, and Buffers memory.