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I have two switches and one VPN router and Two Internet ADSL Routers. The internet connection has been provided to two groups. Group A has no restrictions, that is for Executives and Department Heads. and the Group B has been provided internet connection using a proxy through server (Windows 2003).

Two ethernet cards are installed in the server. Ethernet 1 is switched into Switch A and the other Ethernet is switched into Switch B. I have one VPN connection and I want to share it in both of the switches. I have one option. By using an additional switch and cross pairing two cables to the two switches and connecting the VPN to the cross paired switch.

But in this, the users who are given proxy connections will try to access the internet directly through gateway. I want to maintain the same connection settings and as applied and also share the vpn connection between the two switches without disturbing the existing. I have also a network splitter but its not working fine or I don't know how to put a correct cabling sequence. Please help me. I am in a bare need of the above question.

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  • Are your two existing switches on the same subnet? I assume not as you have the proxy server connected to both switches?
    – Bryan
    Feb 22, 2010 at 11:29
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    Having re-read your question, I get the impression that your two switches are not connected together, so you essentially have two networks, each with their own internet connection, but the server is connected to both networks. Is this correct?
    – Bryan
    Feb 22, 2010 at 11:48
  • Yes, you are absolutely true, as the both switches are not connected together. The subnet masks used for the networks are same for both switches and routers as well.As you have a well illustrated diagram mentioned for the problem i am facing, i wanted to know how to distribute the VPN router connection between the two swtiches without connecting both switches together. Only the connection from the VPN has to be shared with the switches. I dont want to use an additional switch as there will be no security of services between users as i dont want the users to access services without permission.
    – Yuvraj Kumar
    Feb 23, 2010 at 12:35

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It sounds like you have something the the picture below? The IP addresses are only only examples (since you didn't provide any) used for illustration purposes.

alt text

If this is pretty accurate, then your problem is more one of routing than anything else. As Bryan suggested in his comment, you might be able to cross-connect the switches to provide the connectivity but then you have a couple of other problems to solve:

  • Which subnet should the VPN be on?
  • How do you route from one network to the other? Can you put secondary IP addresses on the routers? Or do the routers have another interface you could use?

I'm afraid you are going to have to provide some additional details before we can help you solve this one.

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  • Yes, you are absolutely true, as the both switches are not connected together. The subnet masks used for the networks are same for both switches and routers as well.As you have a well illustrated diagram mentioned for the problem i am facing, i wanted to know how to distribute the VPN router connection between the two swtiches without connecting both switches together. Only the connection from the VPN has to be shared with the switches. I dont want to use an additional switch as there will be no security of services between users as i dont want the users to access services without permission.
    – Yuvraj Kumar
    Feb 23, 2010 at 12:37
  • Unfortunately, this may not be as simple as you would like. You might be able to connect the VPN to one of the switches and then another router or firewall to both switches to get traffic to the VPN device though.
    – Peter
    Feb 23, 2010 at 20:17
  • Nice diagram! I'm guessing it's just bit off in that the .2 subnet users are actually behind proxy rather than behind the switch? We would need more info on why you can't just run the VPN through the .1 subnet, it's also not clear where the VPN is being terminated, the proxy server? A proxy/firewall/content filter that can allow/deny based on the machine/user/vlan would allow the proxy/firewall/content filter to sit between all users, terminate the VPN and make this all much easier.
    – Ed Fries
    Feb 25, 2010 at 3:54

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