Multiple Gateway help!

[Beatlejuice]

OK,

I have been working at a small company that uses Cisco Routers to connect a VPN of 4 offices (using 56K Circuit Relay lines).

One office recently decided to add an Internet connection, via a DSL line.

I connected the DSL modem (which works fine), I connected a DSL/Cable router (SMC-Barricade model). I edited the new DSL router's "Gateway" to "x.x.x.254", so it would not conflict with the existing CISCO VPN router IP (x.x.x.1).

On the hosts I edited the network configuration. Adding the new gateway (x.x.x.254"), and the appropriate DNS servers etc...

My problem:

Whenever the new DSL Router is the only gateway on the hosts, internet works fine on all computers.

When the DSL router (254) is the primary and the existing VPN Cisco router (1) is the secondary gateway. The internet works, but when I access the company programs (using the secondary gateway). The internet or the company programs (or both) lock up!

When the VPN Cisco router is primary and the DSL router (254) is secondary. The company programs work fine...until you try to access the internet. Again a problem with both working at the same time.

So to recap; When I only use one gateway, or use only programs which use the same single gateway things work fine.

Otherwise; While using both gateways, whichever program I start first (apparently regardless of which gateway is set to primary at the time), seems to work fine... Until I start a program that uses the other gateway. Then my previous program doesn't get any response from the initial gateway it was accessing.

Basically it appears that both routers want to be the primary and only "Router" gateway present on the hosts.

Note:

-I can ping all gateways manually fine during all this.
-Also my company uses "Static IP" for all computers (I don't know why).
-The OS the host PC's use is W98, the server accessed using the Cisco VPN router is an "Unix" server for company apps.

Anyways if anyone has any ideas, it would be greatly appreciated! I have never tried using multiple gateways, or routers on the same LAN before!

Thanks,

Beatlejuice

[jumpedintothefire]

Well with win98 you can have one "default gateway" to the internet ( the dsl router ), to access the other remote lans though the vpn, you'll need to add static routes on win98 to the remote lans using the cisco as a gateway.... The "DSL/Cable router" CAN (should?) be replaced with a linux box with 3 nics, one to internet, one to the cisco, one to the lan. It will be the gateway for the lan, add all the routes there instead of ALL the client machines..... IMHO....

For everyone that says "for a $100 I can buy a router" try that with a "broadband router", sure it's easier than linux but does it do what you want to it to do??

[Beatlejuice]

Well I completely agree, the problem would be greatly simplified with the use of a Linux Box acting as a singular gateway for all hosts on the LAN.

However the company I work for won't justify paying for a Linux Box just to be able to access the internet (even though I know its a relativlely cheap solution, all things considered). The problem is that it took the company this long just to justify getting a DSL line for $50.00/mth.

As for finding a simple solution on the client machines, I don't understand why "W98" won't work with multiple routers and gateways? Everything I learned in my network training explained that multiple gateways were possible with W98. But maybe not.

What did you mean by:

"to access the other remote lans though the vpn, you'll need to add static routes on win98 to the remote lans using the cisco as a gateway...."

How do I add "static routes" on W98?

Sorry if I seem a little slow with this, but I am still a bit of a newbie with networking thing.

Thanks,

Beatlejuice

[jumpedintothefire]

The cost of such a routing box is "got a p100 lying around and 3 nics" You could sell it to the brass as "internet access control", filtering unwanted traffic ( porn, msm, icq, etc) just a thought....

98 does work with two gateways, you can have just one default, or start playing around with metric settings.... "route print" will show the routing table.

"route add 192.168.0.0 mask 255.255.255.0 ipofcisco" would be the correct syntax, change to fit the network you need to reach. you may need to have one for each remote network. I run these from a bat file in the startup folder.

Hope it helps....

[Beatlejuice]

Thanks for the tip!

I will try messing around with the "metric settings", I haven't really heard of configuring windows that way, but it sure sounds easier than doing it through the "simplified" network neighborhood gui approach (which settings I have no real control over).

I would make a cheap Linux box for routing protocols as you mentioned. However the satellite office I spoke of is extremely small (only 3 workstations and the 2 routers discussed earlier). So unfortunately I don't believe it would justify the work and time involved in such a project.

Thanks again for the tips, I will try what I can and post any worthy results later.

Appreciate it!!

Beatlejuice