5.3. Configuring gateways

To connect UserGate to the Internet, specify the IP address of one or more gateways. If you use multiple ISPs for accessing the Internet, then specify gateways for each of them. Settings of gateway are unique for each node in the cluster.

Example of a configuration with two ISPs:

  • The eth1 interface with IP address 192.168.11.2 is connected to ISP 1. To access the Internet using this ISP, add a new gateway with IP address 192.168.11.1

  • The eth2 interface with IP address 192.168.12.2 is connected to ISP 2. To access the Internet using this ISP, add a new gateway with IP address 192.168.12.1

If you have two or more gateways, the system will be able to operate in two modes:

Name

Description

Traffic balancing between gateways

Enable the Balancing checkbox and specify the Weight of each gateway. In this mode, all the Internet traffic will be distributed between gateways according to the weights that you have specified (gateways with bigger weights will handle more traffic).

Actions when using traffic balancing between gateways:

1.Hash calculation using source and destination IP addresses.

2.Gateway choice.

Traffic is distributed based on weights. For example, there are 2 gateways:

  • n1, n2 -- session through gateways.

  • w1, w2 -- gateway weights.

Then sessions between gateways will be distributed in accordance with n1/w1 = n2/w2.

Primary gateway with failover to redundant gateway

Make one of the gateways a primary one and then configure the Connectivity checker by clicking the corresponding button in the interface. Connectivity checker will identify whether the host can access the Internet in the specified periods and will redirect all traffic to redundant gateways as they are listed in the console in case of the primary host failure.

By default, the Connectivity checker uses the public DNS server from Google (8.8.8.8), but network administrators can easily switch to another host.