Designs of Duel or Multiple WAN connections

If you use two or more WAN to connect the Internet for redundancy and balance, you may have different options to design your WAN connections. Here are some cases we have worked on. In all cases, we have 3 T1 lines provided by ICN and two Fiber connections provided by Comcast.

Case 1: Cisco Solution

Note 1: For accessing the Internet and sending email, we can use both services. When one service is down, we can still access the Internet using other service.

Note 2: Inbound email redundancy by creating two MX. If one of the service is down, it will try other MX record.

Note 3: Accessing OWA or other web sites hold by us will be dedicated static IP addresses (ICN or Comcast), if primary one is down, we need to update the DNS records manually.

Note 4: Hardware redundancy – we have two Comcast routers, two ICN routers, and ASA can be replaced by PIX as spare. So, we are OK for hardware redundancy, there will have a short down time if we need to replace ASA.

Case 2: Peplink Solution

Note: The different between Option 2 and option 1 is that Peplink will do “automatic health check will monitor the Internet links status and reroute traffic in case of a link failure”. It will update DNS records automatically (option 1 will update the DNS records manually). However, for hardware redundancy, we need to buy two Peplink.

case 3: Juniper Solution

Note: The option 3 and Option 1 are the same. The difference is replacing Juniper with our current Cisco routers. The Juniper does provide some other benefits such as blocking spam and virus. We need to update DNS records manually if one of services is down.

Post your questions, comments, feedbacks and suggestions

Contact a consultant