Managing Outbound Connections

If the Hi-Track RACC application is installed on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista, an administrative user can control and manage outbound traffic that originates from the host machine. By clicking on the Rules menu item, the Hi-Track RACC application alerts the user that it is going to block outbound traffic (see the image to the right). When the user clicks the OK button, they will be redirected to the "Rules" page.

The Rules page displays the Manage Outbound Connections Table. This table enables end-users to create rules that allow outbound traffic to desired sites. As it is captured in the image, users can easily create new rules by inputting the site’s IP (required), rule’s description (optional), and selecting the rule’s status (enabled by default). In addition to creating new "allow-connection" rules, end-users can view, delete, and edit existing rules via the Manage Outbound Connections Table.

Specifying IP Addresses

Since the RACC application does not validate supplied IP addresses, the user can specify IP addresses in any form as long as it is acceptable by the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security. Currently, the Windows Firewall accepts IP addresses in the following formats:

Single address or subnet: specify a single IP address or a subnet for either IPv4 or IPv6 addresses.

IP address range: consists of IPs between the beginning and ending IP addresses (same IP version: IPv4 or IPv6)

Predefined set of computers: specify one of the predefined computers: Default Gateway, WINS servers, DHCP servers, DNS servers, or Local Subnet.

Please refer to the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security specification for more information on how to specify IP addresses.

Importing Rules

In addition to creating "allow-connection" rules using the Manage Outbound Connections Table, users can import them from a CSV file by clicking on the Import CSV button. It is important to note that the Hi-Track RACC application does not perform any format validation on the supplied CSV file. Therefore, it is the end-user’s responsibility to ensure that the content of a CSV file is well-formatted. The following image represents an example of a well-formatted CSV file. The first line is the header identifying the three components of a rule while the second line is blank. The rest of the file consists of outbound rules to be added.