NETGEAR FVS124G manual Configure the WAN Mode Required for Dual WAN

Reference Manual for the ProSafe VPN Firewall 25 with 4 Gigabit LAN and Dual WAN Ports

Step 4: Configure the WAN Mode (Required for Dual WAN)

The dual WAN ports of the FVS124G ProSafe VPN Firewall 25 with 4 Gigabit LAN and Dual WAN Ports can be configured on a mutually exclusive basis for either rollover for increased system reliability or load balancing for maximum bandwidth efficiency.

•Rollover (Auto-Rollover)Mode—In this mode, the selected WAN interface is made primary and the other is the rollover link. As long as the primary link is up, all traffic is sent over the primary link. Once the primary WAN interface goes down, the rollover link is brought up to send the traffic.

Traffic will automatically roll back to the original primary link once the original primary link is back up and running again.

•Load Balancing Mode—In this mode the router distributes the outbound traffic equally among the WAN interfaces that are functional.

Note: Scenarios could arise when load balancing needs to be bypassed for certain traffic or applications. Here the traffic needs to go on a specific WAN interface. This is done with the protocol binding rules of that WAN interface. The rule should match the desired traffic.

For both alternatives, you must also set up Network Address Translation (NAT):

•NAT—NAT is the technology which allows all PCs on your LAN to share a single Internet IP address. From the Internet, there is only a single device (the Router) and a single IP address. PCs on your LAN can use any "private" IP address range, and these IP addresses are not visible from the Internet.

–The Router uses NAT to select the correct PC (on your LAN) to receive any incoming data.

–If you only have a single Internet IP address, you MUST use NAT.

•Classical Routing—In this mode, the Router performs Routing, but without NAT. To gain Internet access, each PC on your LAN must have a valid Internet IP address.

If your ISP has allocated many IP addresses to you, and you have assigned one of these addresses to each PC, you can choose Classical Routing. Otherwise, selecting this method will not allow Internet access through this Router.

To learn the status of the WAN ports, you can view the Router Status page (see “Firewall Status” on page 8-14) or look at the LEDs on the front panel (see “The Router’s Front Panel” on page 2-6).

Connecting the FVS124G to the Internet 4-15

202-10085-01, March 2005