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| CommTraffic Help Documentation |
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If your ISP does not offer a flat-rate plan, whether you dial-up to connect to the Internet or use a leased line, you will most likely be interested in setting limits that would trigger configurable alarms. Limits may be defined on the basis of the amount of incoming, outgoing or total traffic, connection time, or money spent on the Internet connection during the specified period. The alerting system will notify you when you are about to exceed the limit that you have set only when CommTraffic Console is running. To set a limit, select the Alarms page by clicking on the corresponding button on the View Tree node, or by clicking the View => Alarms menu item if the View Tree is hidden. On the Alarms page, click on the New button. A new Create Alarm window will appear. Fill out the Alarm name field by giving an arbitrary name to the alarm, and choose the provider from the drop-down list. If you have more than one network interface on your computer (for instance the dial-up adapter and a network card), you will be able to choose the one you would like to obtain statistics for, or Any for all network interfaces. Write your description of the alarm in the Alarm description field. After you completed this step, click on the Next button. The next screen will allow you to choose the basis for setting the limit. The available limiting criteria are Incoming traffic size, Outgoing traffic size, Total traffic size, Connection time, and Cost. 
The next screen will let you choose the period of validity for the limit, as well as its starting point. If the Predefined radio button is selected, you can select one of the time periods from the Predefined box. You can set the limit for one day, one week, one month, one year, or a custom period. Please select the radio button that corresponds to the desired period and click on the arrows on the right side of the From field to set the starting date of the period. If a custom period is selected, you will need to specify both starting and ending time and date in the From and To fields correspondingly. If you would like the limit to be reset upon expiration, check the Reset this limit automatically upon expiration box. In this case, it will be activated again with the From time set to the previous period expiration time. 
Click on the Next button to continue defining the limit. If your limits are based on traffic size, the next screen will allow you to set the maximum traffic size for the period of time you have just specified. Click on the arrows to set the maximum traffic limit, and choose the traffic units from the drop-down list. If the starting traffic is not zero, you may change its value by clicking on the arrows next to the Initial value field and choose the traffic units from the drop-down list. The Threshold field below allows you to specify how far into the limit the alarm should be triggered. Click on the upper or lower arrow to change how far in advance you will receive the warning about exceeding the limit. The Initial value field allows you to enter the volume of traffic that has been used from the beginning of the period up to the moment of CommTraffic installation. This field enables you to add this traffic to the total volume for the specified period. Click on the Next button to move to the actions screen. 
If your limits are based on the connection time or cost, the next screen will allow you to set the maximum connection time or maximum allowed amount of money for the period of time that you have just specified. Set the limits of the alerting threshold as described above. If your limit is based on cost, you will also need to select the tariff to be used for the Internet connection costs calculation. If no tariffs are available, you should click on the Tariff Editor button to define one. 
Click on the Next button to move to the Actions screen. CommTraffic is capable of performing a variety of actions once the alarm has been triggered. You can configure it to show a message, play a sound, notify a windows domain user, or execute a specified command. If you would like the program to show a message window, go to the Show Message tab, check the Enabled checkbox, type in the message window caption in the Message Caption field, and fill out the Message text field. Click on the Test button to see the message. Check the Use these settings as default for this action checkbox if you would like to keep these settings as the default for the new alarms. If you would like the program to notify you by e-mail, go to the Send E-mail tab, check the Enabled checkbox and fill in the respective fields. You MUST configure CommTraffic to use your SMTP server prior to sending e-mail. Use the E-mail Setup button to enter your SMTP server settings. In most cases, e-mail can be used to send alerts to your instant messaging application, cell phone, or pager. For example, to send a message to an ICQ user, you should enter the e-mail address as ICQ_USER_UIN@pager.icq.com, where ICQ_USER_UIN is the user's unique ICQ identification number, and allow EmailExpress messages in the ICQ options. Please refer to your instant messenger documentation or cell phone operator for more information. After you enter your SMTP server settings and fill the appropriate values in the Recipient e-mail address, Message Subject and Message Text fields, click on the Test button in order to send a test e-mail message and make sure you've set up everything correctly. Please note that the settings from the E-mail Setup dialog window affect all e-mail alarms, not just the current one that you are creating. If you would like the program to play a sound when the limit is approached, check the Enabled checkbox in the Play Sound tab, type in the path to the sound file in the File name field, or click the Browse button and browse for the sound file on a disk. Click on the Test button to play the sound. Check the Use these settings as default for this action box if you would like to keep these settings as the default for the new alarms. CommTraffic is capable of sending a message across NT domains when an alarm is triggered. Please note that the Messenger service has to be running on the machine that is supposed to receive the message. To perform this action, check the Enabled box in the corresponding tab, type in the user or computer name in the User/computer name field, and fill out the Message text field. Click on the Test button to see the message. Check the Use these settings as default for this action box if you would like to keep these settings as the default for the new alarms. You can also configure the program to execute a specific command. To perform this action, check the Enabled box in the Execute command tab, type in the command line or click the Browse button and browse for the executable file on the disk. Enter optional command parameters in the Parameters field. Click on the Test button to execute the specified command. Check the Use these settings as default for this action box if you would like to keep these settings as the default for the new alarms. 
Click on the Done button and the new limit will be added. The Alarms page will now display the information about the imposed limits. You can see the alarm name, the provider the limit applies to, limit type (traffic amount, time, etc.), whether it is active or disabled, the maximum value of the limit, the specified alert threshold, and the actual amount of traffic downloaded / time spend online with the selected provider. The checkbox at the beginning of each line allows you to quickly enable or disable the particular alarm. Selecting an alarm from the list and clicking on the Reset button will allow you to reset it. A dialog window will appear where you can change the starting and ending date for the alarm and its initial value. If the alarm was originally created for a predefined period, you will not be able to change the starting and ending date for the alarm in the Reset dialog window. The only available options will be the initial value of the traffic volume, time, or amount, depending on the alarm type. It is convenient to use the Reset button if the auto-reset feature is disabled for the alarm, and if you need to apply the alarm to a period that begins after the one currently defined. If, for example, you created an alarm for the period "This Month" in May and did not enable the auto-reset feature, the alarm will become inactive in June. If you would like to re-apply this alarm in June, you need to click on the Reset button and the corresponding values for the beginning and end of the alarm period adopted for June. Clicking the OK button will make the program calculate and activate the alarm for June. For the periods of One Week, One Month, etc. only the beginning of the period is available for modification, the ending date is added automatically. If the alarm period is Custom defined, you may modify both beginning and ending date in the Reset Alarm dialog window. Right-clicking on the Alarms list brings up the following menu: New - launches a Create Alarm dialog window. Modify - allows you to modify the selected entry. Reset - resets the activity period for the selected alarm. Enable - enables the selected alarm. Disable - disables the selected alarm. Duplicate - duplicates the selected entry. Rename - allows you to rename the selected entry. Delete - deletes the selected entry. Undelete – restores the previously deleted entry. Refresh - updates the list of alarms. Test Action - tests the action specified in the selected alarm. Copy - copies the selected line, its part, or all entries to the clipboard. Open - allows you to open an alarms file from the disk. You can also drop a CommTraffic alarms file (.ctalr) to the Alarms page to open it. Save - saves the listed alarms to the disk in CommTraffic format, as well as in HTML, XML, RTF and text file formats. Print – opens the printing dialog window. Options – opens a dialog window where you can change the appearance of the Alarms page. |
