1. Home
  2. Networking Firewalls
  3. Reliable Dual-WAN router - Does such a thing exist?

Reliable Dual-WAN router - Does such a thing exist?

I'm working with a business that needs a reliable dual-wan solution since they're preparing to move to an online ASP vendor for their mission-critical app (ticketing system for a live theatre). Small shop, need to support maybe 10 online users, running SBS 2003 R2. They currently have DSL with a cheap consumer grade router/firewall, I am looking to add either satellite or cable ISP to that. Primary need is for automatic failover if the main connection goes down, but since they'll be paying for 2 internet connections it'd be nice to have them both active and load balanced for daily use. Would like to have them hosting their own email on SBS, so I'd configure DNS with MX records for both connections' IPs. Don't think any other issue would arise from the load balancing, as long as the Dual-wan router does a decent implementation of it.

Have looked at XinCom and Hotbrick, but have read enough negative comments about each that I'm looking for second opinions about those and any other good dual-wan routers.

Thanks in advance for all thoughts.

BJ

Reply to
BJ
Loading thread data ...

Linksys makes some "business grade" routers that do this. The writeup I saw showed retail DSL and Cable services hooked to to do auto-fail-over. I'll gues it doesn't keep a standing connection running, but good enough for 99% of what I can see.

Look on their web page. ISTR they were what I would consider reasonably priced.

Reply to
Al Dykes

Cisco or Linksys.

Flamer.

Reply to
die.spam

Juniper SSG series

laan

Reply to
Alan Strassberg

You may wish to investigate the Cisco Router Matrix:

formatting link
Cisco Small Business Network Designer:

http://64.224.10.185/sbnd/child/1.0/index.asp Cisco Solution Designer:

formatting link
Cisco Product Advisor:

formatting link
Cisco Secure Business Advisor:

formatting link
Sincerely,

Brad Reese

formatting link

Reply to
www.BradReese.Com

formatting link

Reply to
post2u

mission-critical

Netopia EN-3386 with the firewall option enabled has a nice failover feature that is implemented badly. It does the failover to the backup just fine, but you have to manually switch back to the primary.

Without implementing complicated routing protocols on a real router, what you want is a low maintenance solution that would essentially test each of N broadband connections by pinging upstream sites that can only be reached if the link is up. Each of the N connections would have its own ping list, and each ICMP list would be directed to its associated link alone. Success of the link's ICMP traffic would constitute proof that the link is up.

You then want a way to establish failover and recovery policy that specifies which links have priority for handling traffic, and when recovery of the downed link occurs what is the action to take.

If you find a product that does that all correctly, and has the ability to build some basic border router filter sets, please post the name of the product. I've been looking for a long time and have found nothing very well implemented or reliable to this specific purpose of failover on redundant WAN connections. You would think such a product would be popular, but apparently among the small business market there isn't a lot of demand. Medium size businesses probably use real routers and routing protocols, and it's ugly.

Reply to
Will

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.