Handling two Network Gateways in Win7x64

Hi - I am trying to find out how to configure Win7x64 to handle two network gateways efficiently and permanently.

My configuration is this:

I am running a Virtual Machine that creates a new public gateway on my network that routes all traffic to my VPN provider. The VM sets the public gateway IP address to 192.168.1.200.

So, if I have a device or other PC that I want to route through my VPN tunnel, I have that device's primary gateway pointing to the VM public gateway IP address (192.168.1.200).

The problems come into play when booting up my PC, or the VM machine is powered down.

When the VM is shut down or inaccessible, I would like all my network traffic to go quickly and efficiently through my normal gateway (192.168.1.1).

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get this to work reliably. By adding the 192.168.1.1 "normal" gateway address to my IPv4 configuration, the majority of my traffic fails to connect to websites when the VPN VM is down.

In addition, when I reboot my PC, regardless of my IPv4 saved settings, the "normal" gateway becomes the primary gateway when the PC comes up, and I need to reconfigure my network settings manually after each reboot.

Can anybody help? I would think there should be a solution to this.

Thanks!

AJ

Which visualization software are you using?

doctore said:

Which visualization software are you using?

Hi, doctore - I'm running a VMWare VM.

Is that what you want to know? Or, did you want to know about the VM that creates the OpenVPN gateway?

AzJazz said:

Hi, doctore - I'm running a VMWare VM.

Is that what you want to know?

Yup. Is the guest OS a server?

A solution that comes to mind would be to run two networks - one with the virtual OS, let's say 192.168.2.0 and your normal one 192.168.1.0 and set the virtual network as preferred. Leave all client IP assignment automatic and run a DHCP role on the virtual server.

doctore said:

AzJazz said:

Hi, doctore - I'm running a VMWare VM.

Is that what you want to know?

Yup. Is the guest OS a server?

A solution that comes to mind would be to run two networks - one with the virtual OS, let's say 192.168.2.0 and your normal one 192.168.1.0 and set the virtual network as preferred. Leave all client IP assignment automatic and run a DHCP role on the virtual server.

Hi, doctore - Thanks for getting back on this. I've been away for a bit.

Are you asking if the Guest O/S supports a DHCP server? Yes, that is an option I can enable.

So, if VPN VM goes down, the DHCP server will go down at the same time, and my PC will immediately get a new IP address from my router's DHCP server and send all traffic through the router?

Is that what you are suggesting?

Thanks,

AzJazz

That's the gist of it, yes.

OK, thanks! That sounds like it might work, but there was I problem I ran into previously that may affect this.

Is there a way I can make sure that the VPN gateway is always the main one I would use once I start the VPN up? It seems like Win7 likes to reassign network connection priorities after I reboot, and I expect the normal connection would always have a higher priority after rebooting, and I would need to manually modify things to get the VPN VM selected again.

Or, does your solution fix this problem already?