Setting up two gateways 1

[ajharn]

I'm getting a second data line installed. I want to set it up and test it with only some PCs using that line for Internet. Is there any reason I can't set it up as below:

Current Gateway Router: R#1
New Gateway Router on new data line: R#2

-R#1 and R#2 are on the same subnet with different internal IPs.
-DHCP is coming from the PDC. DHCP gives R#1 as gateway to all DHCP clients.
-Test workstation will be given a static IP and have the gateway manually entered as R#2.

Do I need to do anything fancier than this to put individual workstations on R#2? Any reason this will fail?

I will probably only put one station on R#2 initially. I don't really have a need for a second subnet. This is a very small network.

Any thoughts and advice appreciated.

Thanks,
AJ

 

[chipk]

Yes, this should work.

 

[ajharn]

Okay, thanks very much.

 

[chipk]

Just curious, but what's your ultimate goal here? Are you trying to just provide redundancy to the Internet?

 

[ajharn]

No, actually we're doing it primarily to dedicate one connection to VoiP. We will also use it for a backup data line. But we need to run it through separate routers because one router was not able to handle the VoiP traffic well enough when other data traffic was saturating the box. So we have separate DNS entries for the two boxes facing the public, and if one of the connections go down we'll just update the DNS entry to point to the other until they're both backup (and temporarily lose VoiP quality as a result...but we have yet another contingency for that situation). The DNS switch makes it seamless to our users, with downtime of only a few minutes while the DNS update cascades out. Have tested this today and it is working well. It's not as elegant as failover between two WAN ports on one router, but as our router proved to be the chokepoint, this configuration solves that.

Thanks again.

 

[TweakMYbox]

If both routhers are multihomes, you could just run a cross-over cable between them, on a completely different subnet. If you're at all concerned with security in this scenario, it might be the better route to take.

Mike Fegan

http://www.TweakMyBox.com

Great resource for free tools, and tech chat. Check out the Babe of the Week!

 

[ajharn]

Thanks, Tweak. But a little more info please. I'm pretty noob at this stuff.

Are you saying my current config is insecure? If so, please explain.

Also, I don't know what multihoming is. I've heard of it, but don't grok.

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks,
AJ