HELP! How do I add static routes on a Microsoft Small Business Server ?

Factual Questions
1
  • also known as “Spiny swallows his networking pride”.

Background: I’m involved in a network project in my copious free time, and we’ve run into a snag: We need to have two exit points from a LAN - one exit point is the server/proxy, a Microsoft SBS (Small Business Server) box with two NICs, one for the Internet connection and one for the LAN. The other exit point is a Cisco 2621 router that connects to a satellite office (via VPN).

I need to install some sort of route on the server, so that traffic destined for the satellite office can be handed off to the router.

Now, while I can configure Cisco routers to arc-weld underwater, I can hardly keep my own Windows PC running. Microsoft-savvy I’m not. And so I turn to the Teeming Millions…

Further details: For historical reasons, the client PCs have the server as their default gateway. Changing this would not make anyone happy. The server knows exactly two networks: The local one and the Internet. And it knows that non-local traffic should be handed to the Internet, so there is some capability to make a routing decision there.

In my salad days, I would sometimes install a route in a server like this: route -p add 131.107.3.0 mask 255.255.255.0 131.107.3.1 (these are not live IP addresses) - has this fallen by the wayside ?

My partner in crime on this job is a really good guy with Microsoft, but not that hot on networking.

Anyhow, any and all comments , hints, help, offers to drive out and fix it etc. etc. would be most welcome.

I shall sing the praises of whoever comes up with a solution.

2

I have Windows 2000 Server, not SBS, but it’s likely to be the same.

What you have looks like it should work. Of course if you are making a static route, make sure you any competiing routes are removed or modified. The help text (“route /?”) gives this example, but everything after “route” is optional.

route -p ADD 157.0.0.0 MASK 255.0.0.0 157.55.80.1 METRIC 3 IF 2

where the numbers are, in order, the destination, the mask, the gateway, the metric (cost for the destination), and the interface number.

You can find more information at www.windows2000faq.com. It has a section specifically on routing.