[gb-users] Multiple external gateways

[Corey Hudson]

We have had 2 Internet outages over the past year on our T1.  Both outages 
had us down for hours.  So, I decided to bring in a secondary connection 
using our local cable company.  I thought that it would be better to use 
another type of network using a completely different type of network. The 
idea of bringing in another T1 wasn't appealing.  It would still come into 
our building from the same local CO, which would most likely mean within 
the same physical cable.  Not good, especially with all of the road 
widening going on here.

Currently, I have our internal network accessing our service network and 
the Internet through  the secondary (cable) network.  The "outside world" 
accesses our service network (website) through the primary (T1) 
gateway.  Since we have complete control our internal network DNS/DHCP 
addressing, changing from one gateway to another is not a 
problem.  However, providing a backup external gateway is another problem.

I looked at GTA's high available option and just scratch my head.  This 
doesn't seem to be an ideal solution since it is still only using one 
external gateway.  In the 10 years we've used firewalls they have never 
failed. Yet the external network has.  So, placing safeguards at a point 
that is probably the least point of failure between our customers and our 
website, e-mail and ftp server doesn't help us.  I'm I missing something 
here?  I always had another firewall on standby that I could switch out in 
minutes, and I realize there are companies out there that can't be down for 
even seconds but when the external network is down for hours what good is 
having 2 firewalls in a high availability configuration?

Enough about the problem and GTA options.  What I came up with was to 
provide another URL to our customers.  So, our primary site would be 
www.midwestls.com and our secondary site would be www.midwestls2.com (not 
yet set up).  We would notify our customers of the alternate URL if they 
have a problem reaching us through the primary URL.  Each ISP would provide 
us with the appropriate external DNS for each URL.

Is there a better method to doing this?  Obviously, the ideal situation 
would be to provide our customers with one URL that would be a lot more dynamic.

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