Re: Win2K3E & Multiple NICs

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No, that in incorrect. You can only have one default gateway per machine, not one per interface. If you specify more than one gateway, the machine will only use one of them. The only redundancy you get is that, if that gateway fails, the machine will switch to the other gateway. This depends on dead gateway detection. It is very limited, because it will not switch back when the original gateway comes back to like. You would have to do that manually.

The only way to ensure traffic for a particular destination uses a gateway other than the default is to use static routes. Otherwise the only traffic going out the non-default gateway will be to traffic in the directly connected subnet.

Having two NICs in a server is a great idea in principle but it has major problems in practice. These involve name resolution and browsing. The cause of this is that there are two IP addresses associated with the server's name.

So the addition of static routes should correct the issue then, right?

Without specifying routes, I expected traffic destined for the non-default gateway to go over the directly connected subnet. Problem is, windows ignored the metrics and went the other way -- using the secondary connection (with metric 2) as the default. That behavior doesn't SOUND correct...?

This box will also be used to host virtual servers so having the ability to route across multiple networks is required. Surely Microsoft realized that...?
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