Why
Use it?
By
locking Indigo backup to a subnet you can ensure
that backups are only conducted when the system
is attached to a network or is attached to a
network in certain areas or subnets.
For
example, you may use a laptop at work and at
home by dial-up VPN. In both cases the Indigo
backup software has access to the backup server
and can backup your files, but while on your
corporate network at work a backup would take
minutes, if you tried to backup using a dial-up
VPN connection you would find that it takes
hours. This is because dial-up connections cannot
transfer information very fast and so when on
this type of connection you would not normally
want to backup. By locking Indigo Backup to
your work place network you could solve this
problem, as Indigo backup would realise you
were at home and would not attempt to backup.
What
might you want to prevent?
Backups
over any 'slow' connection would be problematic
and take excessive time. In addition, your corporate
network might have certain areas where restricted
network pipes are used ('slow' network connections),
or areas where excessive network traffic would
incur a penalty charge from your companies IT
provider. You might wish to prevent a user who
moved around your company's sites from backing
up over these connections.
How
Network Locking works
Each
area or network has a subnet mask applied to
it and each computer has an individual IP address.
For example, if a network was a country, a subnet
mask could be thought of as a county, and your
computer's IP address as a house address. Indigo
Backup finds out what subnet your computer is
on and compares this to an allowable list of
subnets which you have supplied in it's NIC.INI
file. If the subnets match then it allows backups
to take place, if they do not match then it
locks itself down and prevents backups.
How
to Implement Network Locking in Indigo Backup
1.
Find out the subnets that you wish to enable.
If you only want to enable the network which
you are currently on then you can find out the
subnet mask by clicking Start, then Run, then
typing 'cmd' and clicking OK. This will bring
up the MS-Dos prompt into which you should type
the following command 'ipconfig' and press return.
This will then list your ip address and subnet
mask, these will be in the form 000.000.000.000
2.
Open Notepad
3.
Type in each subnet mask, one per line,
with no trailing spaces into notepad.
4. Save this file into the 'c:\program files\indigo
backup' directory as NIC.INI. You will need
to change 'save as file type' settings in Notepad's
'save as...' dialog from 'text files *.txt'
to 'All files' or the file will save as a TXT
file not an INI file.
Many other settings are possible in NIC.INI
files, for example interface status allowable;
for examples, you should download the specific
software and view it's help.
With Indigo Backup v.5 (Trinity)
you can distribute this NIC.INI file from the
server and there is the option to use both this
general NIC setting for most users, but also
to specify specific allowable NIC settings for
individual users (simply create a NIC.INI file
but save it with their username, see Indigo
Trinity Help file). However, Indigo Backup requires
that these NIC.INI files are rolled out in the
installation and place on each users' system
within the Indigo Backup program directory.
This can be achieved either with a corporate
installation program or very simply using Winzip
or WinRaR SFX files, these are self executing
zip archives which are incredibly easy to create
- see the example in these online Tutorials.
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