Possible to have multiple default gateways?

[dwright]

I have one ISP (BT Business in the UK) and one, cheap router (Thomson TG585 v7). I run multiple virtual machines and would ideally have a unique default gateway and IP address for each virtual machine. Is it possible to do this through one ISP?

As I have BT Business Broadband, they have provided me with multiple IP Addresses, but I get the impression that the even though I can allocate a unique IP Address to each VM, it might be quite awkward and require a more sophisticated router to give each VM a unique default gateway also.

Can anyone help?

Dan

 

[Frosty is a Snowman]

is there a specific reason they all need their own gateway ?

it can be done via various methods, from getting multiple lines and multiple routers, to setting up a a switch with a few VLAN's
But more information on why individual gateways are required, and what sort of issues you may be encountering at the moment that require this setup, would be needed to help advise you onw how best to set this up.

 

[dwright]

Sorry for the late response - I am in the process of buying a server, which I intend to run 10 virtual machines on that will be hosted by VMware ESXi Hypervisor. I want each virtual machine to act as if it's a stand-alone computer. From the outside world it should not be realised that these Virtual Machines are located on the same server or related. From the research that I've done so far, I would need each virtual machine to:
-be located on it's own HDD
-have a unique IP Address
-have a unique default gateway

What would be the best way to achieve this and are there any other hardware or software issues that may need to be addressed to make each machine appear unique?

 

[elrebrin]

Sorry for the late response - I am in the process of buying a server, which I intend to run 10 virtual machines on that will be hosted by VMware ESXi Hypervisor. I want each virtual machine to act as if it's a stand-alone computer. From the outside world it should not be realised that these Virtual Machines are located on the same server or related. From the research that I've done so far, I would need each virtual machine to:
-be located on it's own HDD
-have a unique IP Address
-have a unique default gateway

What would be the best way to achieve this and are there any other hardware or software issues that may need to be addressed to make each machine appear unique?

Are you doing server hosting of some sort? I'm not sure about the UK, but in the US, my company owns about 20 Static IPs that we use for various services. It's certainly doable. Could also use port forwarding if that's an option, but based on your post, it isn't

 

[PP Mguire]

Sorry for the late response - I am in the process of buying a server, which I intend to run 10 virtual machines on that will be hosted by VMware ESXi Hypervisor. I want each virtual machine to act as if it's a stand-alone computer. From the outside world it should not be realised that these Virtual Machines are located on the same server or related. From the research that I've done so far, I would need each virtual machine to:
-be located on it's own HDD
-have a unique IP Address
-have a unique default gateway

What would be the best way to achieve this and are there any other hardware or software issues that may need to be addressed to make each machine appear unique?

The problem is not the gateway, but the external IP. Coming in from the outside nobody will know if they are on the same PC because each VM will seem like a different computer regardless of their gateway because remote connections shouldn't see or know the local addresses without being in RDT (or similar). People connecting to the same external IP (the IP which is used to connect to anything on your current connection) will think or assume they are connecting to a single or multiple devices located at the same place. Either or, the local gateways wont matter.

 

[dwright]

The software program I am using is installed on all VM's and is able to see behind the router. Therefore, the software would know that these VM's are from the same network as it's able to get internal information about my hardware and software. When the software searches for information about a VM, such as IP Address, Gateway, HDD id, OS and any other characteristic that will define a computer, I'd want it to not realise that all of these VM's are related. They should all appear to be stand-alone computers.

I have a BT Business internet connection, which has given me 10 external ip addresses. I assumed there would be a way to allocate each of these ip's to my 10 VM's. I was also assuming that creating a unique default gateway for each VM would be the hard part as even though I'd have 10 unique ip's, the gateway would be the same for each VM as it's coming from 1 router. Any more thoughts on that?

 

[DistraughtSysop]

The software program I am using is installed on all VM's and is able to see behind the router. Therefore, the software would know that these VM's are from the same network as it's able to get internal information about my hardware and software. When the software searches for information about a VM, such as IP Address, Gateway, HDD id, OS and any other characteristic that will define a computer, I'd want it to not realise that all of these VM's are related. They should all appear to be stand-alone computers.

I have a BT Business internet connection, which has given me 10 external ip addresses. I assumed there would be a way to allocate each of these ip's to my 10 VM's. I was also assuming that creating a unique default gateway for each VM would be the hard part as even though I'd have 10 unique ip's, the gateway would be the same for each VM as it's coming from 1 router. Any more thoughts on that?

When you say unique ip address, do you mean private or public?

The simplest way that I can think of doing it would be to get a physical NIC for each VM, with each one connected to a different physical interface on an enterprise router - one that will allow you to manually configure each interface. Another way to do it would be to assign sub interfaces to a single physical interface on the router. That would probably be more practical but the setup wouldn't be nearly as straightforward. Either way will give you unique default gateways. You won't be able to do this with a typical consumer home router.

If you're worried about unique public ip addresses then you need to configure static NATs through the router, which should be fine since you have 10 public ip addresses from your ISP.

Depending on how your VMs' virtual network adapters are configured, someone looking at your network hardware info may be able to tell that they are VMs and might possibly infer that all the VMs are on the same server. For example, if you do ipconfig /all on a virtual Windows box it would say "virtual ethernet adapter" which would be pretty obvious to anyone reading it. In such a case, I don't know if there would be a way to get around that. You might be able to map each VM directly to a physical NIC, but I don't know.

 

[dwright]

When I say unique ip address, I mean a different public ip address. I want each virtual machine to have a different public ip address. Sorry for the confusion, I am not to up on the terminology.

So, the easiest way for me to enable each VM to have a different default gateway and public ip address would be to buy a sophisticated router with at least 10 interfaces and 10 NIC's?

I am going to buy a tower server and have the VM's all on seperate HDD's and be managed by a hyper visor (vmware ESXI 5.0). This I have been told, allows each VM to be physically unrelated.

With all of the above in mind, and if I configured the 10 static NAT's, would my 10 VM's appear to NOT be related (NOT be behind the same router, same physical location or same network)?

 

[DistraughtSysop]

Yes, whatever you do will require an enterprise router. You'll either provide each VM with its own physical connection or trunk everything through sub-interfaces. The default gateways will be the interfaces/sub-interfaces of the router.

Yes, the 10 VMs will appear to be separate, unrelated devices with the following caveats:

1) This is assuming that the hardware will not show up as being virtual adapters.
2) Whoever you're trying to fool doesn't have admin access to your networking devices (they shouldn't).
3) Your ip addresses aren't too similar. I mean, if your ISP gave you 2.2.2.1 to 2.2.2.10 then someone might suspect a relationship. Likewise if you use a similar private ip scheme for your inside interfaces.

There are other ways of doing it but I think the above are probably the simplest.

 

[PP Mguire]

If you had a layer 2 switch connected to your router, which is then connected to your internet gateway, you could VPN each individual port but it would take some networking knowledge to do it.

That would be rather costly though. If your software can see through routers, then being on different gateways would (I assume) provide the software with the same information. Subnetting still sees the end result depending on how you do it. Your biggest problem is still using one router as no standard router that I know of will assign different gateways besides the one.