Putting in a temporary site-to-site VPN

[localzuk]

I have a need to relatively quickly get a temporary site-to-site VPN in place between a few schools. Eventually we'll implement a proper WAN but in the short term, we're likely going to be buying a box for each school and VPN'ing between the schools.

 

I just want to confirm something before I go all gung-ho and start.

 

All the cross-site traffic is going to be between servers (even RDS traffic, as RD Gateway is going to be setup to do the job at each site). To handle the routing, would putting in a static route on each server do the trick?

[FN-GM]

You can do, but you will be better off putting the static routes on your Layer 3 switches (or router). It is also much quicker and easier to setup. Edited May 10, 2016 by FN-GM

[localzuk]

You can do, but you will be better off putting the static routes on your Layer 3 switches (or router). It is also much quicker to setup.

 

Small schools don't have Layer 3 routing of their own, and the edge router is a managed device and such a charge would be chargeable (one of the reasons we're looking at doing this in the short-term until we get a proper WAN sorted).

[FN-GM]

What are you using for the VPN? If you use something like PFSense it will act a router anyway. Use that as your default gateway for clients etc, it will do the routing the VPN's and then set the gateway of last resort on the PFsense as the managed router for the rest of it. You get the best of both worlds and no additional cost.

 

If you don't want to do that, static routes on servers are possible.

Edited May 10, 2016 by FN-GM

[localzuk]

We'll be putting in some form of appliance. Either a Meraki MX unit, or as its a very short term project, something cheaper (Something like the TP-LINK TL-R600VPN).

[snagrat]

SWGfL will be able to do this for you for free

[localzuk]

Somerset is different I'm afraid, so I don't believe they can.

[snagrat]

I would check with them as I had this discussion recently with them and they could do it and that was for two Somerset schools