Me again,
I recently posted a question pertaining to the ability to add redundant routes
to help when there is a router failure and you want the host to automatically
use another router until the original is fixed.
I received numerours replies regarding this but there was such a difference of
opinion as to the correct answer that I tought I would attempt to summarize the
answer I received and then see if we can get a definitive answer.
Original Posting:
Last week the company I work for had a failure in both of the hub routers at the
same time which understandably caused sever problems. They have now installed a
third router into the network and the networking group have asked that all the
system administrators add static routes to the servers so that should the
default route fail an alternative route is tried. I have read through the
'Network Configuration' manual and there is no mention of having a setup where
by the system always uses the default route and in the event that that route
does no work it will try another route. Has anyone does this under Digital UNIX
3.2?
Replies:
There were two distinct tapes of answer to the above question!
Type One
Some people recommended that I edit the /etc/routes file and add a specific
static route to the primary router followed by a 'default' route to the
secondary router which would be used when the first route failed.
eg. route add 195.34.169.1 195.34.169
route add 195.34.169.10 default
Other people recommended the reverse, on the basis that if a default route
existed then the system would always use this route instead of the more specific
route. Therfore the system would resort to the second more specific route in the
case of failure with the default route. This also assumes that the order in
which the routes appear in /etc/routes makes a difference.
Can anyone make a definitive statement as to what the behaviour of routed is?
More particuarlly - does the order of routes matter?
Surely the first suggestion means that I must have a definitive route for every
network that people will try to access! This could be horrendous!
I will post a summary after I get a clear answer.
Cheers and TIA
Ben Martel
(100633.2276_at_compuserve.com)
Received on Tue Sep 05 1995 - 15:13:46 NZST