The Dialup Parameters page for each dialup system allows you change parameters which affect how and when Fire Door will attempt to connect to that dialup host.
To change any of the parameters on this page, simply enter the new value into the appropiate field and press the "Accept" button. The new values will be installed and a new page will be displayed confirming that the new values have been added. At this point, use the "Back" button on your browser to return to the Dialup Parameters page.
The Remote Name parameter identifies a remote host to be used for Internet connections. For Windows/NT, this will be the same as the corresponding Remote Access Service entry name.
The user name and password to use for logging into the remote access system. This is essential to completely automate the log in sequence, especially where a PPP connection using PAP or CHAP authentication is being used.
The Dial Retries parameters specifies the maximum number of times Fire Door will attempt to dial the remote host in a single attempt. If a connection is not established after the specified number of redials, then the Fire Door will attempt to connect to the next host in the Dialup Configuration list.
Fire Door continuously monitors all data connections for activity. If the the period of time set by the Disconnect Time parameter passes with no activity on any data connection, then Fire Door will hang up the dialup connection to the service provider. This prevents large periods of wasted connect-time due to inadvertantly forgetting to hang up the connection. The default value is 30 minutes.
NOTE: - some FTP and Telnet programs use a feature called "Keep Alive" which will prevent Fire Door from detecting inactive connections. Be careful to ensure that this feature is not used if you wish inactive connections to be detected. "Keep Alives" will also prevent Fire Door from automatically closing unused TCP connections. See the Link Timeout parameter on the Global Parameters screen for more information.
Fire Door tracks the amount of time which is spent connected to each dialup host. If the total time spent connected to a dialup host exceeds the amount specified in it's Connection Time Limit parameter within the period specified by the the Connection Time Period parameter, then Fire Door will not use that host for any further connections until the Connection Time Period expires.
This feature allows you to set a maximum amount of connect time for any particular host in a particular time period. For example if the Connection Time Limit is set to 5 hours and the Connection Time Period is set to 7 days, then a site may only be autodialled for 5 hours a week.
Setting either the Connection Time Limit or Connection Time Period parameters to zero allows unlimited connect time.
Note that is does not prevent you from explicitly dialling that remote host via the Status & Control page.
This will override the secondary HTTP proxy host that is used by the Fire Door HTTP proxy. The default value specified in the Proxy Configuration page is overridden by this value whenever the system has used this host to make the internet connection.
Some Relay Agents need to be connected to different destination IP addresses, depending upon which dialup host is currently active. For example, the DNS relay ("domain/udp") will probably need to be connected to a different name server depending upon the dialup host currently in use.
To allow this, FireDoor allows you "override" the destination IP address of a relay agent using the Relay Overrides list. Every configured relay agent is listed by service type, and has an adjacent text entry box. Normally this text box will be empty, which indicates that the default IP address set by the corresponding destination field on the Relay Agents page will be used. If an IP address is entered in the text box, that IP address will "override" the default value whenever this dialup host is active.