NETGEAR ProSafe FVS124G - Manual (Page 59)

Reference Manual for the ProSafe VPN Firewall 25 with 4 Gigabit LAN and Dual WAN Ports
Connecting the FVS124G to the Internet 4-15
202-10085-01, March 2005
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.
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 ).
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.