Need help with multiple gateways in Windows 98

[Baba Booey]

[Edit: Problem solved. Read below for solution.]

At work, we have a Frame Relay for WAN connectivity to our home office and we just got ADSL for Internet access. The WAN and the ADSL are setup on separate routers. Some computers (Windows 98) need access to both the WAN and the ADSL. We have it setup and working with the two gateways (one for each router). The ADSL is the primary gateway and the WAN is the secondary. If someone goes to the Internet, it goes through the ADSL (primary gateway). If they need to use the WAN, it tries the ADSL for a few seconds and fails and then switches over to the Frame Relay. No problems there.

The problem is that the Frame Relay connection is also an Internet connection (although its primary purpose is for connectivity to the central database). So, after someone uses the WAN (which switches them to the secondary gateway), it won't switch back to the ADSL when they go to use the Internet. It just stays on the Frame Relay, which is only a 56k connection. Is there any setting in Windows 98 that will always make it try the primary gateway first, even after it has switched to the secondary gateway?

Any help is appreciated.

 

[ScottMac]

You need to add a static route on all of the workstations.

Make the (primary) router to the Internet the default gateway (remove the other gateway reference...only have one enrty).

For the route to the database and other internal resources use this syntax:

Assume the internal network is 10.0.0.0, and your subnet is 10.1.1.0, and the router connecting the internal resources is 10.1.1.254. Type this from a DOS command window:

C:\Route add 10.0.0.0 mask 255.0.0.0 10.1.1.254 -P

This command will direct all traffic destined for a "10" address to the gateway (router) at 10.1.1.254. All other traffic would be sent to the default gateway. The "-P" at the end tells the OS to make it a Persistant route, so it'll be re-established after a reboot. Some of the WIN 9x ish versions don't keep persistant routes. You'll have to make a bat file & autorun it at boot time.

If you have another internal router to other subnets, just repeat the command substituting the correct net parameters.

In the DOS box, if you type "route" by itself or "route /?" it'll bring up a list of options.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[Baba Booey]

Thanks for the help, Scott. I will give it a shot.

 

[Abzstrak]

You don't really need to do anything to the OS. Setup the routing tables on the frame router so that if they are accessing the IPs of you corporate office, it'll go through, but if its anything else then it'll bounce it over to the dsl router.

 

[ScottMac]

If the Wan and the LAN are on seperate routers, then the best he could hope for aiming everything at one router would be an ICMP redirect. With two target gateways, the two primary solutions would be static routes at the workstations, or an additional router, ahead of the other two, that will forward to the proper network (which would likely require static routes on the router...no gain (using a routing protocol between the single router to the other two) would be unnecessary traffic).

The other risk in putting everything to one router would be that it would route everything to the Internet...at best it would slow everything down, at worst, the seurity measures on the inbound would filter most of the traffic.

FWIW

Scott

 

[Garion]

<< You don't really need to do anything to the OS. Setup the routing tables on the frame router so that if they are accessing the IPs of you corporate office, it'll go through, but if its anything else then it'll bounce it over to the dsl router. >>



If it's behind a firewall, ICMP redirects probably won't be allowed so static routes are needed at the desktop.

One note - I hate to say this, but I don't think that win9X will recognize a persistent (-p) in the route statement, a real bummer. Figure out exactly what command needs to be executed and put it in a batch file. Stick a shortcut to this batch file in the startup folder of each PC and it will get added upon boot.

- G

 

[Baba Booey]

Thanks to everyone who replied. I got it working!

ScottMac, I learned a lot from what you posted and it set me on the right track. I was able to look up the specific IP address of the central database system. I then did a route add based on that IP so that any time the application needs to connect to the database, it uses the frame relay router. Everything else goes through the DSL connection. I haven't put the command into a batch file yet, but that is the easy part. Thanks for sharing your expertise.

 

[ScottMac]

No problem, glad I could help.

Take care

Scott