Please Help! RRAS question

georgemc

Hi,
The question and answer below are from chapter 9, page 9-80 of the MSPRESS 70-291 2d Ed. Training Kit(book).

Q: Your department connects the Internet through a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) that it shares with the rest of the organization. However, you have just obtained a faster T1 connection to the Internet that you want to reserve for the IT department's use. A DHCP server provides all of your users with an IP configuration, but IT staff computers are interspersed throughout the same subnets as those of other staff members. How can you allow only IT staff members to user the new T1 line to connect to the Internet? You want to configure this setup only once and make the changes permanent.

A: Use the -p switch with the Route command at the IT staff's computers to add a static route to the T1 connection. The -p switch makes the route permanent.

My poor feeble mind cannot wrap around how this could possibly work/do what they want it to. Telling a computer how to get somewhere (static route to T-1 connection) doesn't tell it to use that somewhere (T1 connection) to get somewhere else (route all it's non-local traffic to).

Am I reading or looking as this question the wrong way?

Thanks in advance for your assistance/input... :

royal

Think about it like this. Go to start > cmd > route print. Your first line will look something like this:

0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.100 25

0.0.0.0 means all traffic that is not in the route table. For instance, data to the internet should go to the 192.168.1.1. In my case, 192.168.1.1 is my default gateway. Your first deault gateway has a default metric of 25. If you look in your network properties, Automatic Metric is chosen by default (25). If you add a custom route to the route table, you can give it a metric less than 25 which would mean that default route would actually go to the router which sends data out through the T1 line. Essentially, this solution is just adding a default gateway manually directly to the route table. You just need a metric lower than 25 to get it to work.

Hope this helps.

georgemc

Thank you,

I understand exactly what YOU are saying and I have a strong grasp of routing, ip, default routes, default gateways, etc.

It just doesn't seem to me that the question provides enough information to answer it and that the book answer is possibly worded strange.

Normally if I were to create static route TO something it would be something like

Destination(TO) Gateway(route to destination)

The book answer states that you create a static route TO the T1 connection

Other information I'd like to have based on there being multiple subnets include:

Are the T1 and DSL connected to the same router or separate routers?
Do some subnets have multiple hops to the router(s) with the T1/DSL
A diagram of how the various subnets are laid out and physically connected to each other and the SDP router.

My thinking is that if I were going to bring in a new T1, I would have it terminated at my SDP (Service Delivery Point) router, which would be the same router that is connected to the DSL line.

I hope you can see the picture the I'm trying to draw in my mind.

Thanks again