Ok so I've been tasked with finding a way to make a computer to act as a config system for VOIP routers, etc. So imagine you have 4 NICs in this PC (3 are USB), and you can run either XP Pro or Win2k3 Std R2. You want to connect 4 Netopia or Linksys routers to this, and then access them via IE or a browser of your choice to configure them for a client. Now here is the problem, all 4 routers have DHCP server on and all 4 of them will assign the same gateway IP to each nic. So far, I can't find any info on the web to find a tool or utility to allow binding of a browser screen to a physical NIC. So I can't configure IE like the following: IE1>NIC1, IE2>NIC2, IE3>NIC3, Firefox1>NIC4. Now there might be a way to do this by changing the priority of the connection in Win2k3 in the advanced settings of network connection, but that's too manual and time consuming. I really want to be able to bind browser screens or something even like a vLAN where a virtual IP is bound to a NIC and it forwards to the gateway on the NIC. Is there a way you guys know how to do this in windows OR in Linux. I'm willing to try Linux if there is a way to make it happen. Thanks for any ideas.
No machine will do this because the routing table will have conflicting addresses with the same route metric default of 20 for DHCP in windows. It will "shit a brick" to put it technically Trying to route to 192.168.0.1 on multiple interfaces will not work. IE binds to some netlibary API (something like that) which binds to the TCP/IP stack in windows so you will have endless issues trying to link IE to one physical interface. It seems unlikely that you are going to configure 4 of the VOIP routers at the same time but if you really want to be able to connect 4 at a time, i would plug the external links of the routers into the PC (not the internal ones) and assign DHCP address via the PC. You would want to run W2ksp3 since it has the built in DHCP Server or some linux like debian or ubuntu. Then you can just do an "arp -a" or look at the DHCP address lease table in windows/linux and it will show you what machine has which address. If the VOIP routers come preconfigured with a static IP on the external interface (unlikely as all the linksys gear pulls via DHCP) you can plug one in, change the IP, plug another in, change the ip, etc until you get all 4. Let me know if this makes no sense because i know i am not explaining it well and I don't have visio with me to make a diagram
Thanks for the reply Will. What you said makes sense but usually these routers have external admin turned off. What you said was plug the WAN side to the PC, and run a DHCP server on the PC (like TurboDHCP, which we run now) and connect to them that way. Unfortunately, with the external admin off, that won't work. Is there no way to run some sort of a virtual LAN on the PC or something on each NIC? My CEO thought it was easy and started dicking around in IE and XP Pro while I waited and looked over his shoulder. He gave up 15mins later and said it's up to me to research it. hahahaha...i love it when he's wrong.
Yea you can tell him it violates most of the IP routing protocols. If they have external admin turned off, you have little choice, except one... Install Vmware (i would use windows since it is so much easier) and have 3 virtual windows enviroments, each on one NIC. Disable TCP/IP in the network config for the main host for those NICs and you should have 4 windows boxes (the main one plus the 4 virtual ones) each tied into one NIC. If you need help setting it up I do ESX server and VMwareserver all day long. You would need 4 windows keys (or three installs of linux and a windows key for the main host).Who is going to set up 4 boxes at once?