multiple (backup) gateways

[ZippyDan]

in Windows 7 it is easy for me to add alternative gateways in the network adapter properties.

i simply give my primary gateway a metric of 1, and then set my backups with metrics of 1000, 2000, etc.

in Mac OS X (snow leopard), i don't see any to define more than 1 router for each interface. any insight?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

It's called "Dead Gateway Detection" if you're google searching.

OS X doesn't support it like Windows NT and its offspring do. IPNetRouterX might be the thing you're looking for.

 

[Nothinman]

I would think it would be more reliable to do it at the switch/router level anyway. If this is for a business you probably have more devices that aren't smart enough to do that too like printers, fax machines, VOIP phone system, etc.

 

[Emulex]

why don't you handle this at the router? it makes more sense. freebsd can do dual gateways. you could run that in a vm (Pfsense) and let it handle the dual wan routing too.

$100 for a used dual-wan router that handles 50meg no problem (basic nat router). icmp/dns/ping to detect failure of wan. honestly with a real pfsense setup can do better like https - get - if fail x times - down gateway and route traffic the other way.

Since 20% packet loss can cripple users on SSL or DNS but might appear not too bad for http.