Policies

The Policies page provides a unified space for administrators to define and manage rules from a single page and apply them to more than one network or application at the same time. The task of blocking application access and wireless network availability schedules are managed as policies. You can create a maximum of 32 policies for an Instant On site. If more than once policy is created and activated, the policy with the higher priority will be applied first on the site. If there are many rules about the same element, the rule with the highest priority is applied and the remaining policies are discarded, using the smallest common factor:

• A category for an application policy.
• A network for a network schedule policy.

Overview

The Policies > Overview section displays the list of policies created for the site, in order of their highest to lowest priority. The policy details are categorized under the following fields:

Table 1: Policy Details

Field	Description
Priority	Denotes the order in which the policies are to be executed. The policy list is displayed in decreasing order of its priority, number 1 being the highest.
Policy	Denotes the set of rules created to govern the applications usage and networks schedule.
Action	Denotes the action to be performed by the policy: Activate—Makes an entity type available or active. Deactivate—Makes an entity type unavailable or inactive Allow—Allows an entity type. Deny—Blocks an entity type.
Rule	Defines the action that needs to be carried out by the policy.
Schedule	Denotes the time and duration for which the policy needs to take effect on the entity.

Instant On supports creating policies for the following entities:

• Applications
• Networks

Reorder Priority

The list of policies are displayed in order of their highest to lowest priority. To change the order of the priority, follow these steps:

1. Under Policies > Overview, click the Reorder button.
2. Use the and icons displayed under the Schedule field, to reorder the priorities for the polices.
3. Click Update.

Creating an Application Policy

It is possible to allow or deny access to application categories for some or all wireless networks. Additionally, the Network condition can be configured. If the Network condition is not provided, the policy will be applied on all wireless networks.

The following procedure describes how to create an application policy:

1. Under Policies > Overview, click the Create Policy button.
2. Under Set Policy Type, select Applications.
3. Click Next.
4. Under Set Rule and Conditions, configure the following settings.
   1. Action—Select one of the following actions for the rule:
      1. Allow—Allows traffic matching the specified application categories and wireless networks pass.
      2. Deny—Blocks traffic matching the specified application categories and wireless networks.
   2. Applications—Select the application categories from the Applications drop-down list, for which the action needs to be applied. For the current list of application categories, see Application Categories.
   3. To optionally add a network condition, click Add condition and follow these steps:
      1. Under Condition > Match, select Networks.
      2. Under Wireless Networks, select all the active Networks on which the policy must be applied.
      3. Click Next to proceed to the next screen, or Remove to cancel the operation.
   4. Under Set Policy Applicability > Identification, enter a name for the policy.
   5. Set the Priority for the policy.
      1. Under Position, select either Lower or higher.
      2. Under Policy, select a policy from the drop-down list.
   6. Click Finish.

Creating a Network Policy

Instant On allows you to assign a single schedule to many different wireless networks instead of configuring a schedule per wireless network.

The following procedure describes how to create a network schedule policy:

1. Under Policies > Overview, click the Create Policy button.
2. Under Set Policy Type, select Networks.
3. Click Next.
4. Under Set Rule and Conditions, configure the following settings.
   1. Action—Select one of the following actions for the rule:
      1. Activate—Makes a wireless network available for users to connect when the provided schedule is active.
      2. Deactivate—Makes a wireless network unavailable when the provided schedule is active.
   2. Under Wireless Networks, select all the networks on the list for which the rule needs to be applied.
   3. Click Next.
5. Under Set Policy Applicability > Identification, enter a name for the policy.
6. Set the Priority for the policy.
   1. Under Position, select either Lower or higher.
   2. Under Policy, select a policy from the drop-down list.
7. Under Schedule, select one of the following options:
   1. Always Active—Click this option to make the wireless network always available for users to connect.
   2. Create Schedule—Click this option to create a schedule during which the network should become available for users to connect. Follow the instructions provided in Creating a Schedule.
   3. Existing Schedules—Click this option to use the existing schedules.
8. Click Finish.