Accessing Network Activity Monitor

Network Activity Monitor is a separate module of LANProtector Manager used for passive monitoring of the network peers and for monitoring of Allow and Deny actions taken by the LANProtector Server. Passive means that it will not probe the network to discover existing network peers but just collect the information by listening to the network.

To access the Network Activity Monitor, use the Main Menu Tools or Toolbar View Network Activity command. It is necessary to be connected to a LANProtector Server instance first before using Network Activity Monitor.

First a Select Server Active Ruleset dialog will appear showing the list of all active Rulesets from the currently connected LANProtector Server:

To select a Ruleset, double-click it using the mouse or click on the OK button or use Enter on the keyboard.

It is possible to open one Network Activity Monitor window per each of the active Rulesets from the Server, but it isn’t possible to open more than one Network Activity Monitor for one Ruleset.

Network Activity Monitor List

After selecting a Server-side active Ruleset, the Network Activity Monitor for that Ruleset will appear.

Network Activity Monitor window caption contains name of the connected Server and name of the selected Ruleset in form of “Server_Name/Ruleset_Name”.

Network Activity Monitor will initially be empty until a first Refresh or information retrieval from the connected LANProtector Server is performed.

Each row in the Network Activity Monitor list contains a unique network peer discovered on the network (IP Address and MAC Address columns) and which Rule was matched and action taken for that peer (State, Rule Name and Rule Condition columns). Columns represent the following:

            State column shows Allow or Deny image specifying the action taken by the LANProtector Server for the network peer
            IP Address column displays the IPv4 address of the network peer in a quad-dotted format
            MAC Address column displays the MAC address of the network peer
            Rule Name column contains the name of the Rule which was first matched when testing the network peer; State column corresponds to this Rule’s state
            Rule Condition column shows the matched Rule condition by which the network peer was matched

Network Activity Monitor Status Bar

Under the Network Activity list is informative Network Activity Status Bar:

Network Activity Status Bar contains information divided in 4 panels, described respectively from left to right:

1. Total Network Peer Count Panel shows total number of peers detected on the network
2. Allowed Network Peer Count Panel shows number of peers that have been granted network access and haven’t been blocked
3. Denied Network Peer Count Panel shows number of peers that have not been granted network access and have been blocked
4. Network Adapters Panel shows the name of a Network Adapter associated with the selected Ruleset and used for monitoring the network or a number of Network Adapters if more than one is associated with the Ruleset

Network Activity Monitor Management

There are several ways to interact with Network Activity Monitor to access available features:

1. Toolbar located above the Network Activity Monitor list:

Toolbar commands are described respectively from left to right:

            Save Network Activity to a File = opens the Save dialog to save the currently loaded Network Activity list to a file
            Configure Filters = opens the Network Activity Filters dialog
            Refresh = refreshes the Network Activity list / fetches Network Activity list from the currently connected LANProtector Server based on the configured filters on the Network Activity Filters dialog
            Auto-Refresh = activates or deactivates (toggle button) automatic refreshing of the Network Activity list from the connected Server; when activated, the following toolbar field will be enabled:
            Interval (s) = textual field specifying the time interval in seconds how often will the automatic refreshing in the background be performed when Auto-Refresh is activated; value can range from 3 to 100 seconds, default being 3 seconds

2. Network Activity list context menu (mouse right-click menu):

The first three context menu commands, from top to bottom, are equal to the first three commands in the Network Activity Toolbar as described above.

Create New Rule command invokes New Single Host Rule dialog and fills in the information contained in the currently selected network peer entry from the Network Activity list (IP address and MAC address) and sets some Rule properties automatically (Allow or Deny state and Rule Name):

Accepting and creating this new Rule will add it to the Rules list of the currently selected Ruleset on the Main Window in the Rulesets list.

3. Keyboard:

F2 = opens the Save dialog to save the currently loaded Network Activity list to a file
F4 = opens the Network Activity Filters dialog
F5 = refreshes the Network Activity list / fetches Network Activity list from the currently connected LANProtector Server based on the configured filters on the Network Activity Filters dialog
F6 = activates or deactivates automatic refreshing (fetching) of the Network Activity list from the connected Server
Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Insert = copies currently selected network peer entry from the Network Activity list to clipboard
Enter = invokes New Single Host Rule dialog as described for the Create New Rule context menu command above

4. Mouse:

Double-clicking a network peer entry in the Network Activity list will invoke the New Single Host Rule dialog as described for the Create New Rule context menu command above.