![[Internet Connection Resiliency Image]](http://www.hanetworks.com/networks/rainfinity/rchanetworks.jpg)
| Network Description | Implement Internet Connection Redundancy with RainConnect |
| Authors | Rieko Sato, Jason Schwegel – Rainfinity Software |
| Product Details | RainConnect is a software traffic management solution
for multi-homed networks. RainConnect automatically detects Internet
outages, including access router failures and re-routes WAN traffic to an
alternate path so that business can continue to operate. RainConnect
also increases download speed by load balancing network connections across
multiple ISP links. RainConnect can be installed in front of any firewall
or directly on Check Point NG or Microsoft ISA Server. |
| Design Details |
In this network design RainConnect software is installed on a dedicated server
in front of Cisco Pix firewall. A RainConnect server can be clustered to
provide HA/LB but it is not for this design. RainConnect is providing 5 basic
functions for this multi-homed network: Outbound HA, Outbound LB, Inbound
HA, Inbound LB, and Traffic Shaping by port number. In this design
RainConnect is multi-homing 2 Internet connections each from a different
provider and with different line speeds. Outbound Traffic – RainConnect’s IntelliNat™ provides intelligent network address translation to transparently manage outbound traffic to ISPs. Through IntelliNat, RainConnect is able to load-balance outbound traffic and failover Internet connections without requiring router reconfiguration or obtaining special cooperation from your ISP providers as is required with BGP-based solutions. IntelliNAT is aware of the status and capacity of each of the ISP connections. It manages discontiguous pools of registered addresses from the various ISPs and maps them transparently to hosts on the private network. If the Internet cannot be reached via an ISP, it will automatically redirect traffic to another ISP. Furthermore, it spreads outbound traffic among the ISP links to balance load among ISPs. Inbound Traffic – For inbound traffic, RainConnect adds intelligence to DNS through Adaptive Domain Name Service™ (ADNS) technology. ADNS resolves inbound DNS queries based on the ISP load and availability status. RainConnect also enables DNS to be highly available and eliminates single points of failure. RainConnect’s built-in DNS Agent will act as the authoritative DNS server for user-configured A and MX records, to ensure that replies only contain reachable IP addresses. furthermore, it alternates among addresses for a given host to direct inbound traffic in through the various connections to balance load among ISPs. It uses a low time-to-live (TTL) value to ensure fast, automatic failover in the event of a failure. This design was implemented using RainConnect in transparent mode. Transparent mode offers the simplest configuration because no network changes are required on the router or firewall. In this mode the firewall thinks it is talking to the router and the router thinks it’s talking to the firewall.
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| System Specifications |
RainConnect is supported on Redhat Linux, Solaris,
and Windows 2000. |