freesco failover, redundant routers

[celeritas]

On my network I currently have a Win2k AS PC providing RRAS + demand dial for my 56k dialup. I'm hoping to get broadband soon, and wanted to build a freesco router and use it until I can find a hardware router/firewall I like. I plan to keep the 2k box around as a ftp/web server -- and as a backup router.

If the freesco box dies/crashes, what is the best way to configure the 2k box to automatically take over the routing? Can I simply add its IP into the gateways of my 2k client PCs? If the first listed gateway (freesco) is unavailable, will the clients only then go to the next one on the list (like DNS numbers), or will they broadcast to all gateways at once? Thanks.

 

[ScottMac]

You can add a second gateway with a higher metric, if the primary (lower metric) goes away, the clients should automatically switch to the secondary.

The command is entered in a DOS window.

Route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 <gateway address goes here> <metric goes here> -P

The &quot;-P&quot; makes it a &quot;persistant&quot; (permanant) route which is reestablished after a reboot.

The default metric is 1 (the minimum), any other higher number will make the new &quot;default&quot; route secondary. At fifteen, the packet will be discarded at the next hop, so keep it single digit, and as low as possible. Two should work just fine.

If you need to delete the route sometime in the future, the command is

Route delete 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 <gateway address> <metric> .....you MUST use the entire string to delete the route, since the first dissimilar charactor is the &quot;2&quot; in the metric field.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[celeritas]

Anyone? If someone can confirm that gateway numbers are accessed &quot;top to bottom&quot; then my question will be answered. I want to know/control what interfaces are routing incoming/outgoing traffic; I don't want gateway #2 to come into play unless gateway #1 (or a site beyond it) is unavailable. Assuming that I can get gateway #2 to kick in when needed, does anyone have thoughts on how to automatically flip clients back to gateway #1 when it comes back up? TIA.

Edit: You replied while I was typing the above.