from the home screen, select set date & time. a window similar to that in figure 14 is displayed.

    figure 14 set date & time window

   

    your internet firewall has the ability to obtain its time settings from the internet via ntp protocol. the time obtained will be accurate to utc.

    utc stands for “universal time co-ordinated”, and is the standard time common to all places in the world. it is also commonly referred to as greenwich mean time or world time. many isps require firewall logs to be recorded to utc (or within a fraction of it), as tracking hackers can be very difficult if reports of times are conflicting.

    if you wish your internet firewall to get its date and time settings in this way, check the use ntp to set time automatically box.

    this requires a working internet connection. you should still set the time manually, so that the firewall has the correct time to work with until it can connect to the internet.

    you should also select your time zone from the drop-down list box at the top of the screen. if you cannot find your city in the list, you should set this to the one with the same offset from gmt as is used at your location.

    if you want the internet firewall to automatically adjust the time and date in accordance with daylight savings time, check the box labelled “automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes”.

    you can also specify that utc is used in your logs, rather than the time in your location (this may be a requirement of some isps). if you wish to do this, check the box labelled “display utc in logs (instead of local time)”.

    to set the time manually (3com recommends that you do this initially, even is you have selected to set the time via the internet), enter the date and time in the boxes at the bottom of the screen. set the time in 24-hour clock, and use four digits to specify the year (for example, 2000).