How do I redirect certain hosts to a specific web page?

Products

• PacketShaper

Issue/Introduction

I want to create a class that redirects certain hosts to a specific web page. These hosts are ones that are doing excessive Inbound HTTP traffic -- running P2P applications and uploading copyrighted files. We want to redirect each of these users to a specific web page that informs the user that his machine is being blocked and explains who to contact to resolve the problem.

The hosts are inside of PacketShaper and are clients that go to websites outside of PacketShaper.

Resolution

To do this, you must create two classes: one that redirects the hosts and the other to classify traffic to the redirected website.

Note: This is different than redirecting a specific website to another website since this requires only one class with a never-admit/redirect policy.

1. Create an Inbound HTTP-based class that specifies a host list containing the IP addresses you want to redirect.

Class Name: HTTP-Never-admit
Protocal Family: IP
Service Type: HTTP
Server location: Any
Inside Hostlist: Create a host list name and add the hostnames or IP addresses you want to redirect.

2. Add a never-admit policy to the HTTP-Never-admit class you just created and select the web-redirect option. For the Redirect-URL, specify the website address you want to redirect to. This has to be the complete URL, for example: http://www.packeteer.com.

3. Create the class based on the IP address of the webserver traffic will be redirected to.

Class Name: HTTP-Redirected
Protocol Family: IP
Service Type: HTTP
Server Location: outside (or inside depending on the location of the web server)
Address: IP address of the webserver (inside or outside depending on the location of the web server)

4. Change the HTTP-Redirected class to an exception so it appears above the HTTP-never-admit class in the traffic tree.