SonicWALL TZ170SP What is a modem profile?, How many profiles can you have on the TZ 170 SP?

What is a modem profile?

A modem profile contains all the ISP POP-related settings required for the TZ 170 SP to dial out, authenticate, and connect to the public Internet. In each profile, you can specify up to two separate phone numbers, the username/password, a chat script, and whether the SP will receive its new IP address information dynamically or statically. You can also specify that the TZ 170 SP dial immediately upon primary WAN failure, or dial only on data, or manual dial (i.e. user must log into TZ 170 SP and click on ‘Connect’ button to dial out), as well as specify maximum connect times if needed. The TZ 170 SP has a new scheduling feature for the analog modem that allows you to limit the times it can be active, on a weekly basis.

How many profiles can you have on the TZ 170 SP?

You can create ten profile entries, but you can only specify two of them as active – one as the primary profile, and one as the alternate profile. If the phone numbers in the primary profile do not work, then the TZ 170 SP will attempt to use the alternate profile to connect. Profiles may contain login information for the same ISP but using different access phone numbers, or each profile can be configured to connect to different ISPs. In the latter case, you would need to purchase dial-up accounts with more than one ISP.

Can I specify my own AT commands?

Yes, this is done in the ‘Modem > Settings’ section of the TZ 170 SP’s management GUI, or you can use the country drop-down provided to initialize the modem for the specified country.

How do I set up the TZ 170 SP to do modem failover?

It’s simple – create a dialup profile, set the modem’s initialization settings, set the dialup profile you just created as the ‘Primary Profile’, and then enable ‘WAN Failover’. When enabling ‘WAN Failover’, you may optionally configure it for ‘Preempt Mode’, which will cause the TZ 170 SP to disconnect the analog modem once the primary WAN resource has returned to service.

What is Probing?

The TZ 170 SP has the ability to perform a physical check, as well as a logical check, of the primary WAN and the analog modem. By default, the analog modem will only become active if the primary WAN interface suffers a physical failure (i.e. is electrically disconnected). However, in environments where uptime is critical, it may be necessary to perform additional logical checks of upstream targets to ensure that the path is indeed valid. Enabling probing for the analog modem’s failover/failback capabilities allows the TZ 170 SP to probe an upstream IP address via ICMP or user-definable TCP port, over the Modem, over the Ethernet, or over the Modem and the Ethernet. You can also specify the probe interval, the failover trigger level, and the successful number of probes required to reactivate the primary WAN interface.

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