Routing VoIP and Internet traffic

Question

I work for a school district with the following configuration:

Two remote sites connect to a main site via T-1s, then the main site has 3 T-1s which provide Internet access, advanced content filtering and hosts our CallManager.

We are adding bandwidth via cable modem to each site and keeping our T-1s in place, primarily for VoIP , but there are also some services (web, file shares, etc.) hosted at the main site.

How can I accomplish the following:

1. allow certain subnets (for teachers, administrators, secretaries) at the remote sites to use the faster Internet connections
2. the student and voip subnets at the remote sites should continue to use the T-1s
3. if the cable connection goes down, the teacher/admin subnet should failover to the T-1s.

At first I was thinking I could use a static IP route with acls to deny the student subnet to use the cable connection, but I think that cause the student network to fail.

Answer 1

We have similar config in Juniper, not sure if cisco allows that:

1. Source based routing basically, so you configure what networks use which interface or gateway as its route.

2. Interface monitoring via ping(multiple pings to multiple outside gateways with different threshold and weight), if the interface goes down, source based static route is automatically taken out and default route is used.

Answer 2

Sounds like a typical example where you'd want to use Policy Routing. You'll need a Policy rule that sets the next hop address and (ideally) enough routing protocols running that you can use (say) the loopback of the remote router as "next hop". If the next hop you're trying to set is unreachable, Policy routing will fall back to the normal routing table.