Automatic Failover Networking

I don't know about the fail over but I'd really like to know as I am in the same 'expectation'!

Regarding bonding of Internet connection, the answer is simpler for me: you can't do that only on your side, it has also to be available from your ISP -and if we're talking about ISPs I can't see that feasible.

You may rather want to look at load balancing between your two connections, it's not bonding but it may help if you have heavy requirements from a few PCs.

And for load balancing, I'd also like to know a simple solution without adding a box on my network or using a proxy: not sure I am thinking right here.

Patrice

Got a possible solution for the fail-over: http://www.hawkingtech.com/support/details.php?CatID=33&FamID=79&ProdID=86

There is one new available @ 24USD on eBay: http://cgi.ebay.com/Hawking-Technology-FR24-Dual-WAN-Firewall-Router-New_W0QQitemZ140313570012QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCOMP_EN_Routers?hash=item140313570012&_trksid=p4295.c0.m299&_trkparms=240%3A1318

Note after some further readings, I'm not sure this unit provides an automatic fail-over.

If you google Dual WAN Router, you'll find a few interesting solutions.

Thanks for the hint about the Hawking FR24 ... Looks interesting

Peplink Balance 20W @ http://www.peplink.com/document/Peplink_Balance_20w_datasheet.pdf does what you want in terms of fail-over.

Other products from this manufacturer are also quite sexy. I have no access to their US web shop, so can't get prices: can you post them here or mail them to me?

A simple server/gateway (Linux, Windows, etc) with 3 network card will do that. With both internet connection going into the server and routed to your LAN, you can set it up to direct connection between the two. You can have both remain active and connected if it doesn't cost you more. Or you can connect to wireless only when DSL fail. There should be network appliance available to do that also.

I have 3LAN card on my windows server.

LAN#1 is connected to cable modem

LAN#2 is connected to broadband connection

LAN#3 is connected to hub (private network)

Please guide me how can i have auto failsafe connection.

thanks

When I worked for a regional bank we had a small Cisco router at each branch, with 2 outgoing NICs (effectively). One went to a T1 and a second to an ISDN modem. The router would auto-dial the ISDN modem if the T1 went down for even a moment. It generated a 'hickup' as far as the users at the branch were concerned, but the other end of the T1 and where the ISDN dialed into was effectively the same big Cisco router at the 'other end'. Doing this, there were times that the branch went for days without even realizing they had been 'failed over'.

This would be like having two different 'pipes' to the same ISP.

My issue is in being able to do this without setting up BGP or some other router cognisant protocols and getting the ISPs into a commercial style 'ip sharing' arangement.

I was around setting up a config for a commercial server farm where we routed traffic over 3 separate IP connections to separate IP providers (Global Crossing, Time Warner, and AT&T before the takeover by SWBell) in the late dot.bomb days. It was both a bueaucratic and administration nightmare to get it set up. But once it was set up it worked like a dream. (Any two of our IP providers could 'go down' and we could still get traffice to/from our data centers without problems. By default traffic was routed over each provider, but if one went down the traffic was spread out over the remaining, and if a provider came back up, the traffic was re-spread out again automatically. Sweeeet. - Typical failover from a failed connection was 5 seconds or less if I remember right.)

Edigan... I understand your 'compulsion', and I do still care about this answer. My current understanding of a 'real answer' is below.

From what I can tell, 'both ends' of connections need to 'cooperate' to make it work. True seamless failover like the 'big boys' do require running multiply connected routers, that are connected to properly configured routers on the 'other end'. If you have multiple 'other ends' operated by different organizations it is very difficult to get this done. (I think you need to run BGP protocol or similar, AND to get the 'other ends' to agree to allow failover of the IP addresses allocated to you. Then you get down to the technical work of configuring your routers AND theirs.)

For bonding or 'shotgun' type scenario's you typically are communicating via multiple routes or links (phone lines, dsl, cable, T1, DS3, whatever...) from one point to another. Like your site to your ISP, and this allows amalgamating the bandwidth in to what is apparently a single stream. ISDN modems have done this automatically for years, and there are versions of analog modems that did it too. Sun had 4 port ethernet NIC cards that could bond all 4 into a single data stream. Great for clustered type operations. But again, it has fallen out of vogue. I suspect it will come back when we need more bandwidth than our networks can allow again, but with multiple-terabit transmission bandwidths these days, I doubt I will see it in my home network :)

Thanks for all the responses.

What was I realling looking for? A good 'my end only' solution. Looks like it is not in the cards for today.

... Enjoy.