This test monitors the traffic flowing through the firewall and reports the rate at which packets are allowed to pass and the rate at which data is passing through the firewall. In addition, this test keeps track on the number of dropped packets, blocked packets and the backlogged packets which hugely influence in identifying the load handling ability of the firewall. This test also identifes how well the new connections are created and how many active connections are currently allowing data to pass through them. This way administrators can be proactively alerted about the level of traffic flowing through the firewall and the load handling capability of the firewall!

This page depicts the default parameters that need to be configured for the FTMGFirewallPacTest.

• The TEST PERIOD list box helps the user to decide how often this test needs to be executed.

• If the ISPASSIVE parameter is set to Yes, then it means that, by default, all the Forefront TMG servers being monitored by the eG system are the passive servers of a Forefront TMG cluster. No alerts will be generated if the servers are not running. Measures will be reported as “Not applicable” by the agent if the servers are not up.

• Once the necessary values have been provided, clicking on the Update button will register the changes made.

When changing default configurations of tests, the values with “$” indicate variables that will be replaced by the eG system according to the specific server being managed - for instance, $hostName is the host/nickname of the target host, $port is the port number of the server being monitored. E.g., for a server xyz:80, $hostName will be changed automatically by the eG manager to “xyz” and $port will be changed to “80” when configuring a test.