 | One of my servers just became inaccessible on it's static IP connection, the gateway is missing from that connection, it is now only accessible through the dynamic IP connection. I was just able to fix the problem by adding a route entry. See |
How do you setup a Windows Server 2003 box to have multiple public IPs, for example on a Comcast Cable internet setup? Comcast can allow you to establish up to 5 public IPs if you pay extra for this service.
What I've done is buy multiple 802.11b wireless routers, such as Linksys, to the cable modem. The LAN side of each is connected to different computers which are setup as the DMZ for the given router. This gives a lot more flexibility than hooking computers directly to the cable internet.
Comcast broadband is likely to give your routers addresses on similar or widely differing subnets. Once they are assigned a public IP, I've had the IPs stay stable for several months.
But what if you want to have those different IP addresses come into a single box, for example one running a virtualization solution such as VMWARE?
The first solution might appear to be setting up multi-homing on a single adapter with multiple gateways. It's possible to ignore the warnings that Windows 2003 gives, and this setup may appear to work for a while. But you'll eventually encounter the "dropped default gateway", or "lost default gateway", where the default gateway disappears after some days of operation.
A better solution is to setup a router. But a physical router that allows for multiple WAN interfaces, such as a SonicWall TZ170, TZ180, etc. can cost about $600. And these only allow for two.
pfsense is a free open source router package that can easily be used within a VMWARE Server session to create a router that can handle a wide variety of needs.
 | How to create a virtual router within VMWARE Here's a quick run down of how to set up pfsense:
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Some notes for pfsense says that you must setup firewall rules between the LAN and WAN, but my experience was the virtual machines picking up DHCP from the PFSENSE LAN (on the host interface), automatically established connectivity with the net without any special PFSENSE configuration.
Other hints:
- If you are replacing a physical router that was hooked up to a system like Comcast broadband internet where semi-static (long term) DHCP leases are given, you can reclaim that IP for pfsense to use for PFSENSE's WAN connection by having PFSENSE spoof the MAC address of the WAN interface of the replaced router.
- I haven't setup multiple public IPs yet, but it should be as simple as creating additional virtual ethernet adapters for the PFSENSE VM assigned to the VMNET1 adapter. They should be able to replace existing physical router WAN interfaces, or request new IPs for themselves if you haven't reached the limit of allowed IP addresses on the network.
Things to do:
- Figure out how to assign a specific VM on the private host only network to be the DMZ for each of PFSENSE WAN interface. This will involve setting up firewall rules.
Related:
- Windows Server 2003 Loses Default Gateway - http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=153930
- Note that there are no event viewer entries for this occurence
- Windows 2003 peridoically losing it's default gateway - http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=653694
- http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1361623&page=16
- Default Gateway for Multihomed Computers - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;157025&Product=win2000
- Multiple default gateways can cause connectivity problems - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/159168/EN-US/
Google searches
- "windows 2003" "lost default gateway"
- "windows 2003" "default gateway disappeared" - did not match any documents.
Misspellings:
- rotuer