FailOver and overhead question

[detscorn]

Hey All,

I have Cisco 2811 Routers and have a couple questions.

1. We are getting ready to set up a couple of our remote sites with faster connections. Right now we have Site A and Site B connected with a T1, which we are getting ready to replace with a Fiber (50Mb) connection. Currently the sites are on different subnets, but they don't need to be. My question is for speed purposes is it best to keep the subnets intact and use a router, or would doing away with the routers and putting them on the same subnet be fine? Site B has about 20 users and they need resources on Site A. Site A's users do not need to access Site B (except by us(IT is located at Site A) for management).

2. Failover - Same setup as above, but what if we kept the routers in place and used both the T1 and the fiber. Fiber would be main connection and if it went down, the router would fail over to the T1. How would this be set up? I did a little reaseach on the the net, but didn't find anything definitive. I just need pointed in the right direction.

Thanks,

Dylan

 

[Quadratic]

For the first question, typically separate remote sites with different access requirements should be put on their own subnet/vlan. Inter-vlan routing is easy enough to do for the traffic that does need to cross between sites. That would limit the scope of broadcasts and thus be a bit more efficient.

For failover from the fiber to the T1 link, if you control both sides of both links (if I understand the question), it would just be a matter of setting up an internal routing protocol (eg: OSPF or EIGRP) to dynamically converge the network upon link failure.

Do these sites have Internet transit, and if so, from where? You reference both the T1 and fiber service as being used for site-to-site connectivity.

CCNP, CCDP

 

[detscorn]

Hey Quadratic,

I understand that keeping the subnets seperate will reduce the broadcast traffic. We really have no need to keep the subnets seperate because of access requirements. I was just trying to simplify things and not have to use two expensive routers if they weren't absolutely necessary. I would think that the speed would be fine with our setup without the routers??

We do control both sides, sort of....

also I guess I have to be a bit more clear on this part of the question. This is actually a different connection than the one above (the one I'm trying to get rid of the routers on)

Both sites are police depts in two different towns. We are located at site A and hold the resources that Site B needs to access. We both maintain our own internet connections. Currently we have this connection with a T1 but it's very slow for the Site B folks trying to accesses Site A's resources. This is why we are getting the fiber connection, but thought that we might want to keep the T1, just in case.

Thanks a lot for your help!!