Reliability Features

Internet connection failover

WinGate can bypass system routing when it makes outbound connections. This allows you to define which available internet gateways will be used on a per-service basis, and the way that multiple connections can be used (e.g. failover, or round-robin for bandwidth aggregation). WinGate monitors gateway availability (if enabled), and automatically applies the policies you define to the list of available gateways to select which gateway to use on a connection-by-connection basis. Gateway usage
In conjunction with Gateway Monitoring, but also handling dialup connections, the Connection failover features in WinGate are flexible and comprehensive.

Should an internet connection become unavailable, either by virtue of a dialup connection failing to connect, or an internet gateway becoming unavailable, then the administrator can set up policy for how to fail over to another connection. This policy may be set on a per-service basis in WinGate, and concerning dialup connections there is a global precedence of connections that may also be applied.

This allows for instance the WWW Proxy to fail over to one circuit, but email to fail over to a different backup circuit in the event of a failure in connectivity.

The unavailable gateways are still monitored, so if they become re-available, they will be used again
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Internet gateway monitoring

WinGate can monitor gateway machines on the same ethernet segment. By using a periodic ARP request, WinGate learns of failures to gateway machines. Upon such failures, WinGate marks that gateway as unusable, and the gateway selection features and connection failover features will (depending on your configuration) switch over to an alternative connection.

Administrators can specify different schemas for failover on a per-service basis, allowing for instance the WWW Proxy to fail over to one circuit, but email to fail over to a different backup circuit.

The unavailable gateways are still monitored, so if they become re-available, they will be used again.
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Server redundancy options

Normally options for server redundancy are limited. Apart from the obvious hardware redundancy options, if you choose to deploy and use the WinGate Internet Client on your networks, then you have a further opportunity to provide fail-over services in the event of a system crash.

By deploying the WinGate Internet Client, then installing several WinGate servers (whether they each have a connection, or share connections), then if one server becomes unavailable, the automatic discovery mechanism used by the WinGate Internet Client will kick in and find the fall-back server.

This allows the client machines to maintain access to the Internet even though the main gateway may have been disabled.
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