Multiple NIC Routing

[ILW3]

Hello Everyone,

I am using Windows 2003 and have 7 network cards in the same server.
The reason for so many NICs is that my ISP is a cable company and looks like they assign my static IPs by DHCP, so in order to use multiple static IPs I have to have each IP assigned to a NIC.

My problem is that Windows 2003 doesn’t allow having multiple gateways.
If I have a gateway entered for one IP then only that IP works.
I guess I need to route all incoming connections from the rest of 6 IPs/NICs to use 1 gateway on the seventh NIC.

Please help me if you know how to do it.

Thank you

 

[fs483]

I'm confused, why do you need 7 static IPs for one server ? I hope your NICs are NOT directly connected to a switch along with the modem ? There are other ways of accessing your IPs through firewalls or routers...

 

[skialta]

Are you trying to run various services such as mail, web , ftp, etc off each dedicate IP/NIC? I'm backing akwong on this and recomend you connect your server/network behind a good firewall, etc. What is your goal with this server?

 

[ILW3]

Yes, all NICs connected to the same switch as cable modem.
Is it wrong?
I am running a webserver and need different IPs for each site in order to use SSL.

Thank you in advance for your help!

 

[terry712]

host head the server and then you only need one

servers dont really like multiple nics (and i mean any os)
they tend to raise lots of nasty issues

 

[AndrewTait]

I would challenge the statement Terry has just made -

Servers do not like multiple IP address's on the same segment of network. Servers are fine with multiple NIC's and many companies (3COM, Intel for 2) recommend having multiple NIC's in servers for resiliancy.

You can configure them to have the same virtual IP address for load balancing or different IP addresses on different segments. However, you would need to have one of the segments be the primary route out, and a route back if this is required.

I do agree that it can cause nasty problems, especially if your switches are not capable of supporting resilancy or load balancing (Nortel are a swine for this).



So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains
And we never even know we have the key

 

[fs483]

Get yourself some hardware firewall (Cisco Pix firewall or some other one) to insert between your Server and the modem first. Then set your firewall to accept multiple IPs (if you want) or just a single IP for your different websites. Then have the different/single IP from the firewall point to the same internal private IP on one of your nics of your server. Set up host headers and you'll be ok that way. You avoid having multiple nics on the same subnet and you add an extra layer of security. The method of using host headers for website works fine (I have 6 or so website on the same IP) but I don't know if it works for mail and ftp though. I never tried it.

 

[blakey2]

Set up a linux box with one (or as many as you like) NIC (s).

Use 'IP ALIASES' to set up multiple logical IP addresses for the single card.

Don't know if this is possible in windows sorry, but very easy to do with linux.

I run this setup for ftp.

Thanks.

 

[bookouri]

Ive got a Win2k web server that has been running for years with two NICs with different IP and gateways. When I set up the win2003 server replacement I got warnings about multiple gateways. Is this something different? What do I have to do to "fix" the problem?

thanks for any suggestions