Forefront TMG Feature Deepdive – ISP Redundancy
Hi Forefront community,
My team members on the Forefront Threat Management Gateway project recently posted a great note on how ISP redundancy works in Forefront TMG. For those that don’t know, ISP redundancy is an important feature if you are deploying Forefront TMG as the edge of your network to filter Web traffic. Some companies choose to have multiple network pipes coming into and out of a site to ensure that if one becomes unavailable, there is at least a modicum of network access.
Forefront TMG lets your company take advantage of both pipes securely. First, it provides a failover capability. It can detect if one of the ISP links is unavailable and transfer traffic to the other link. Second, it provides load balancing between the two links. If one link is a faster link, for instance, Forefront TMG can be configured to route more traffic across that ISP link.
The great thing is that the engineers have removed much of the complexity involved in configuring such a solution. I’ve posted a couple screen shots from Forefront TMG Beta 2 to show how simple it is to configure.
First step is configuring the basic network settings for each ISP.
After configuring the ISPs, you decide the traffic weight between them.
What this means is that keeping your offices secure and connected becomes even simpler as Forefront TMG comes out. If you’re interested in Forefront TMG Beta 2, you can get more information on this Website.
Bill Jensen
