Broken connection alert as an SMS to a mobile telephone

The placeholder %t allows the current time of an event to be incorporated into a message. For example, an alert about the interruption of an important VPN connection can be sent by e-mail or as an SMS to a system administrator's mobile telephone.

The following requirements have to be met for messaging:

The status of the VPN connection must be monitored, for example by means of "dead-peer-detection" (DPD).
The device has to be configured as an NTP client in order to have the current system time.
An SMTP account must be set up for transmitting e-mails.

Once these requirements are fulfilled, messaging can be set up. This is done with a new entry in the action table; e.g. with LANconfig under Communication > General > Action table.

Select the remote site for the relevant connection. As Condition select 'Broken' and enter the action as the transmission of an e-mail.

mailto:admin@mycompany.com?subject=VPN connection broken at %t?body=VPN connection to Subsidiary 1 was broken.

If the connection is broken, this action sends an e-mail to the administrator with the time of the event in the subject line.

Note: If the mail is sent to an appropriate Mail2SMS gateway the alert can be sent directly to a mobile telephone.

Note: For complex scenarios with several subsidiaries, each of the remote sites is given a corresponding entry in the device at the central device. For monitoring the central device itself, an action is entered into a device at one of the subsidiaries. In this way the administrator receives an alert even if the VPN gateway at the central location fails, which could potentially prevent any messages from being transmitted.