Re: Wireless Bridge with Redundant wired VPN

citymaster@xxxxxxxxx hath wroth:

I need to connect two buildings via a wireless bridge, while keeping
the existing wired VPN connection between them in place (yes, creating
a loop).

It's not a loop. It's two routes to the same IP block. It's exactly
analogous to installing two ethernet cards in your PC, plugging both
into a switch, and then trying to load balance the traffic (or switch
the traffic) between them. If you have a Windoze laptop with both
wired and wireless connection, the selection of route is done
automatically using the "metric" value in the IPCONFIG command. See:
| http://groups.google.com/group/alt.internet.wireless/msg/ffa9dc78cc2bd26f
for some hints.

I need both connections in place so that in case of a failure
on one the other may pick-up the traffic.

Are you trying to use both at the same time? If not, there are
protocols for switching the router on failure such as RIP. If yes,
there are load balancing routers:
http://www.edimax.com/html/english/products/list-PRIrouter.htm
http://www.edimax.com/html/english/products/list-router.htm
that can distribute the load between the two routes.

The wired VPN link is in
place and working; two firewall/VPN appliances acting as gateway at the
internet connection in each building facilitates this.

Maker and model of the firewall/VPN appliances?

I have
installed and tested the wireless bridge to the point that I know it is
able to reliably send packets back and forth between the two buildings.

Maker and model of the wireless bridges?

When you say "redundant VPN", does this mean that you have a VPN
running over the wireless bridge?

Now I need to connect this bridge into the networks at each building
so it can be used for traffic. The internal networks at each site are
different subnets (192.168.1.0/24 and 192.168.2.0/24). What would be
the best approach to accomplish this?

That depends if you want to have both paths distribute the traffic or
if you want to just use the wireless as a backup. My guess(tm) is
that the bandwidth of the wireless is much higher than your (telco???)
wired connection and should be considered the primary path, not the
backup. If there's more than about a 10:1 ratio in available
bandwidth, I wouldn't bother trying to load balance the two routes. If
they're equal, then load balancing makes sense.

Fail over is easy enough. If the VPN routers being used for both the
wireless and wired connections can do RIP-2, then simply assign a
"cost" to the path and the routers will do the rest. Some model
routers also have built in fail over features.

I'm not sure how I would impliment load balancing. Probably with a
dedicated load balancing router. However, I couldn't find one that
also can play VPN router. This may take two boxes which seems a bit
too complicated. Dunno.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
.

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