Best way to handle link failover for based upon connectivity to a single host?

Question

We have a machine here that needs to connect to a remote server. The link to the remote server is an unreliable 7GHz link -- but we have a backup. We need to be able to fail over to the backup connection if the remote host cannot be pinged over the default connection.

Can't use a proxy, since it's not web based (and the configuration is sensitive).

It would be great if someone had a recommendation for a hardware device!

Thanks, gooddelta

Answer 1

Any reasonable router should be able to do the failover using a routing protocol such as OSPF or RIPv2.

I think even some of the real-low-end Linksys/Netgear type routers will do RIPv2.

You can also run e.g., quagga on a Linux/BSD/Unix box.

A set up with an actual router is probably going to be a little more work to configure, but should be quite reliable, and also extensible.

Finally, if your two links are ethernet, you may be able to just get away with spanning tree.

Answer 2

Depends on the network interfaces on the WANs. But Netopia has some cheaper simple routers that fail over to dial up.

Answer 3

You could try a Hotbrick LB2. That has failover to secondary WAN based on pings.

Answer 4

If it's a Linux system, you could try failoverd, a simple failover daemon.

Answer 5

Any reasonable router running a dynamic routing protocol (rip/ospf etc) will do what you need. It is what they are built to do.

Cisco, Juniper, linux boxes running quagga, Vyatta (linux under the hood with an ok web gui) or even a pair of Linksys WRT54GLs running OpenWRT would do the trick.