Redundant Wan Links

[TheStressFactor]

Hello all,

I will start by giving some detail and then the actual question.

Right now I have a corporate office and about 15 remote sites which will continue to grow. Each of these sites have a t1 line back to the main office. Most of the remote offices are running a 1601 or 1720 cisco router (one has a 3620) and the corp. office has a 3725.

Each site right now has there own server used for local dns, dhcp, file and print..etc. We are looking to change this in terms of file storage. Rather than each server hold files we want to implement a SAN solution where all company files are stored at the corporate office. To speed up data transfer we will probably implement Riverbeds Steelhead devices for caching files in each location.

Of course this would mean we are going to be depending heavily on each of the remote sites wan link back to the corporate office. If a remote sites wan link goes down then we are totally screwed.

Can anyone suggest what redudant wan link possibilites I have? Can the cisco devices in each location even support this? Also, what would be the best option to go with for a redudant link...dsl? frame? idn?

I am looking for a solution that would provide the least amount of downtime and packet loss as well.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Patrick

 

[robertjo24]

We run redundant servers in two locations (different states), with frame to each. Each remote site has a PVC to each master site. If one master location goes down, the other picks up automatically. Howerver, we've found that our biggest problem with out T1's is the local loop at the remote site, so redundant PVC's on frame does not help in this situation.

We use cable and DSL in locations for redundancy back to the main office. You can install a small firewall/router at the remote sites to point back to the main site.
I think you can use a secondary interface (sub interface) on the router for the redundant link.