It's very satisfying to know that my "problem" has been accepted, and moved up the ladder, by one of the world's premier corporations, even though I don't have a service contract. I am a small fry consulting engineer with big responsibilities to small businesses who depend on my keen oversight, topological engineering, and manipulations from afar. I rarely visit my customers' sites, but interact nightly by use of site-to-site IPSec VPNs between my home office and their business locations, in the Los Angeles metro area. These businesses do not use "domains" in the Microsoft sense. They do have peer networks. They are highly modularized. They enjoy site-to-site VPNs. Employees are thus able to work at a downtown office, or from home. We eschew "cloud storage" generally, and favor ownership of all equipment, by businesses. Redundancy is commonplace.
At this time I will volunteer the reasons why "scheduled firewalling" is important to me... and possibly to other small business owners who read this. Though other innovations might follow, the primary need is to facilitate reliable work data BACKUP, scheduled during non-business hours when all is quiet, data-wise. My scheduled backup software comes alive and does what it is supposed to do. The problem is that my workers habitually walk away from their desks, at the end of each work day, with applications open and ... data files open.
While modern backup software succeeds (but not always), regardless of a data file's state of openness, I long for the older-fashioned method of disconnecting workers from file servers, on schedules. A backup thus has monopolistic access to a file server during backup operations, and my workers return the next business day and pick up as if nothing happened. Meanwhile, I receive e-mails from backup softwares at completions of jobs, reporting status... PASS or FAIL. This is oversight, from afar.
Why not rely on said "FILE SERVER" for such time windowing? ... you ask? Because I moved away from file-server operating systems... a fixture of 1990s and 2000s mentality. I choose to rely on ROUTERS instead of clunky, expensive, unnecessary FILE SERVERS, for my system control. My boxes are smaller, now. They work faster. Instead of relying on big boxes that hum and throw lots of hot air, that employ inefficient general purpose CPUs and software, I rely on smaller, faster, lighter boxes that employ special purpose computer architectures (hardware + firmware) that run faster, and cooler. My various boxes can be physically installed much more conveniently, inconspicuously, and safely, than, say, Dell mini-tower computers. Configurable routers receive firmware updates, from a manufacturer, all of which is much simpler, smaller, and less frustrating than horrendous "Microsoft service packs."
Computers are now cheap, replaceable, and nothing to depend upon. I don't even have to visit the customer site, on those rare occasions when things go wrong. I pick up the telephone and have my customer swap a box, about once every two years.
This preference comes from a senior engineer... a hardware and firmware veteran. I also wear a hard hat and pull cable! I understand that CABLES, though simple, are valuable, while BOXES, though complex, are cheap, and replaceable. It's about replacing file server operating systems with routers. And enjoying old fashioned scheduled access to file servers.
