Multiple upstreams

Stuart Stevenson ( (no email) )
Sun, 09 Aug 1998 22:01:33 -0500

We're currently doing a little web hosting via a 128k ISDN and an Ascend=
Pipe 50. We have a class C from PSI and have been humming along just=
fine. Now we're starting to feel the pressure to add bandwidth and have=
struck a deal with a neighbor to pull in a 10-Base-T cable from his 2 T1s.

The plan is to use a Cisco router between our suite and theirs. We can get=
another Class C from these guys, but we would also like to keep the PSI=
connection as a backup.

We've got a few questions on how to do all this:

1) Is it possible (and reasonable) to have both connections active at the=
same time?

2) If so, can we do it and keep the PSI address block with routing via the=
new upstream (which is connected to Verio) or get PSI route to our Verio=
block?

3) If not, is it reasonable to setup two subnets (1 PSI block and 1 Verio=
block) with each virtual server assigned an address in each subnet? I am=
thinking if we do it this way, I could have our primary DNS on the Verio=
subnet, pointing to Verio addresses, with our "secondary" setup as a=
primary on the PSI subnet, with all it's A records pointing to the PSI=
block. I know it's twice the work, but (to me anyway) it makes sense and=
would provide complete connection redundancy.

Any thoughts from some seasoned pros?

Stuart Stevenson
stuart@tracent.net
Tracent Technologies, Inc.
www.tracent.net