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thegewse

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Cisco switch redundancy/failover with limited options

I am trying to configure my network to have no single points of failure.

I am looking to implement a clustered firewall, however I am given one internet cable and one private network cable by my ISP where I host our current single firewall.

I have been thinking of how I can split each cable into 2 (2 internet cables, one to each firewalls WAN port and 2 private network cables, one to each firewalls LAN port)

I have thought of setting up 2 Cisco switches in a failover config (I believe this is possible but have never done before..) then plug one WAN and one LAN port from each firewall into separate switches.

However I am stuck with the fact that I am given 1 cable for the internet side and one cable for the private network side and hence can only plug these into one of the switches so I lose my redundancy in the case of switch failure.

Has anyone been in my situation before? any other solutions that I am missing?

Matt

PS. Having my ISP configure VLANS on their switches to provide 2 network cables for internet and 2 network cables for private network is not possible due to my ISPs network architecture, they could do this for me if I was willing to change my public IP addresses however this would be a major project so im trying to avoid this at all costs.
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btassure
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thegewse

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I know that unfortunately you are correct btassure, i was looking for an impossible solution!