Question

DSL connection to get outside of network.

Asked by: RushB

I work in a school district, and our Internet Access is firewalled, NAT'ed etc. I want to be able to get outside the school network and test to make sure users can access the website, e-mail etc. from their homes.

The phone company will be coming to install a speedstream 4200 DSL modem. My question is, what is the best way to be able to get out through the DSL line on my network? Do I dedicate one computer to it, hook it to a switch and set up a VLAN maybe? Install some VPN software on the host computer, and connect to it when I need to test outside?

I am open to all suggestions, just looking for the best way to do this...

Thanks,
RushB

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Asked On
2007-04-19 at 11:01:44ID22522087
Tags

speedstream

,

4200

,

vlan

Topics

DSL Lines / Cable Internet

,

Virtual Private Networking (VPN)

,

Network Operations

Participating Experts
3
Points
250
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: PUNKYPosted on 2007-04-19 at 12:24:38ID: 18941675

You might read the link below:
http://www.portforward.com/

 

by: kbratton1Posted on 2007-04-19 at 12:46:42ID: 18941851

I think you are on the right track, but it is all about outside IP addresses.  If you are dynamic and have a small switch handy, you can make a DMZ and plug in there when you want a barefoot PC on the Internet.  If you have a fixed IP address and do not support dynamic as well, this DMZ approach will not work.  In that case, you could make a Proxy Server with two NIC's in it and use that as a bridge/firewall for your LAN to the ISP.  The Proxy would then be your 'outside' test box.

 

by: jasoncolemanPosted on 2007-04-19 at 13:24:11ID: 18942128

Where I am I did it with by setting up a dsl router in a new vlan and setting up policy based routing on our core to change my next hop to be the dsl line instead of the normal internet line. Whenever I want to test through the dsl I just enable the policy.

 

by: RushBPosted on 2007-04-25 at 07:19:02ID: 18973708

That sounds like the solution I would like, I can hook the DSL modem directly into a Cisco 3750 switch, which can route. The DSL company is giving me two IP addresses, one for the DSL Router, the other for whatever.

Can I set it up that way were I can use the interface on that VLAN as a proxy or something where we can switch back and forth to get out on it and test web servers/e-mail from the outside?

Thanks,
RushB

 

by: kbratton1Posted on 2007-04-25 at 07:32:56ID: 18973829

Since you have two ip addresses, you can set up a DMZ with a small switch and hook the ISP feed to it.  Hook one DMZ port to your router and use one outside ip address for the routers outside port and hook the router's inside port to a large switch where all the inside machines hook up.  Hook the other port in the DMZ to your test pc with two NIC's.  Now set up the DMZ NIC for the other outside ip address.  Hook the other (inside) NIC on the test machine to the large switch.  Now when you want to test, you can disable the inside NIC and enable the outside NIC to make the test machine a true outside machine hooked directly to the internet (you will need outside DNS settings on this NIC to surf).

 

by: RushBPosted on 2007-04-25 at 15:54:26ID: 18978064

Ok, I really would rather not set up a machine for that purpose.

How could I do it through the switch, maybe using the IP address of the router as a proxy in IE?

I'm on a 10's network, and would like to keep it that way. I'd like to be able to use this router on a Cisco 3750 switch by configuring a VLAN or something, and simply turning on proxy settings or something.

 

by: jasoncolemanPosted on 2007-04-26 at 05:58:17ID: 18980987

You can set up the new gateway with an internal address on the same subnet as your existing gateway and then use a route-map on the 3750 to set the default next hop to be the new router for hosts that match a defined access list. The only problem is I don't know what features the 3750's support, here is how I did it with our 4506 -
!
route-map dsl permit 10
 match ip address 100
 set ip default next-hop <ip of dsl router>
!
You then define an access list 100 that includes whatever hosts you want to include. You also need to apply to route-map policy to whatever vlan the hosts are on with the following command:
ip policy route-map dsl
You may also need to configure the dsl router to route all your various internal networks inside depending on how your network is set up. If the 3750's don't support this functionality you can set it up the same way and just manually change the gateway on the machine you wish to use whenever you wish to use it. Hope this helps.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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