Yes, this can be done, there are many ways to do it, and many reasons for
doing it. However most of the times that I heard of this being done it is
either for high-availability or for load sharing purposes.
I've worked with the former, but I've actually never seen the latter even
though I have had quite a few vendors try to sell it to me. For high
availability purposes a group of machines will frequently share a "cluster
address" in addition to their normal address. When you make a connection to
the service that they provide you use the shared address, and the clustered
machines determine who you should really be talking to. You might use
something like this for a file server.
The latter case of load balancing I have usually heard of the being
implemented with the help of a special purpose device. (Note that a
'device' can be a generic computer with special software.) When you connect
to one of the shared IP address you actually connect (in a very loose sense)
to the load balancing box. It determines which device you should actually
be connecting to, and then performs the magic necessary to keep everything
working. The boxes that sit behind it may or may not actually have the same
IP addresses, but this depends upon who the particular load balancing box
works. In either case it looks to an outsider like many machines are
sharing the same IP address. I suspect that many busy web sites are
actually implemented in a manner similar to this.
- Jeff Younker - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - These are my opinions, not MDL's -
-----Original Message-----
From: Jimi Aleshin [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 1999 2:14 PM
To: firewall-lista
Subject: 2 IP addresses in one corporate/local network?
My dad works at the Department of Defense for the U.S government
and was
telling me that he has like 200 computers in the area of where they
work and
(of course) a server. He was telling me (I might have heard him
wrong) that
2 machines are able to have the same IP address on their own local
network.
I don't know if this is true or not? By the way, those computers are
not
connected to the internet, except two unclassified ones are. What do
you all
think?
--
/Jimi Aleshin
Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ: 26180172
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