TABLE OF CONTENTS Traffic is not flowing, the phone is ringing, and you are scrambling to figure out why. As the administrator of your firewall, you have a large selection of tools at your disposal. There are also a number of tools that you should have close in the event of trouble.
SmartView Monitor, SmartView Tracker, a local network sniffer you should know how to use all of the tools possible to ensure you can troubleshoot the problems that you will no doubt face. We review the Check Point tools and some third-party tools that we recommend that you have in your arsenal.
Check Point has provided the SmartView Tracker so that you can view the traffic as it flows through the firewall. This should be the first line of troubleshooting your firewall. SmartView Monitor allows you to view interfaces and links in real time. Immediate traffic flow analysis is available to determine how the system is functioning. Along with these tools, Check Point provides command-line utilities that expose the FireWall-1 Kernel statistics, VPN and encryption, and other performance metrics.
Check Point also has other tools that will allow the more technical personnel to perform fw monitor functions. Fw monitor is a command-line facility that allows you to analyze the traffic flowing through your firewall on a systematic basis. We review the best methods of using this utility, and how it can provide insight as to where your firewall may not be functioning as you expect.
Typically the first thing you ll...
