# DHCP and default gateway **URL:** \ **Category:** Chatting over the Back Fence\ **Created:** [July 1, 2014, 5:31pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/dhcp-and-default-gateway/25810 "2014-07-01T17:31:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![System1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@System1](https://forums.suse.com/u/System1)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 5:31pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/dhcp-and-default-gateway/25810/1 "2014-07-01T17:31:32Z")
Anyone ever set up a dhcp pool with multiple default gateway/router/whatever addresses? Does it work where if the first address is not available, the second one becomes the default gateway? – Stevo ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 5:52pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/dhcp-and-default-gateway/25810/2 "2014-07-01T17:52:34Z")
On 01/07/2014 15:31, Stevo wrote: [color=blue] > Anyone ever set up a dhcp pool with multiple default > gateway/router/whatever addresses? > > Does it work where if the first address is not available, the second > one becomes the default gateway?[/color] The default gateway is just that, the default gateway. You can’t have more than one. What you could do is assign a gateway to one pool of addresses and a second gateway to another pool so hedging your bets. ## HTH. Simon Novell Knowledge Partner * * * ## If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface, please show your appreciation and click on the star below. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 5:54pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/dhcp-and-default-gateway/25810/3 "2014-07-01T17:54:38Z")
On 01/07/2014 15:52, Simon Flood wrote: [color=blue] > What you could do is assign a gateway to one pool of addresses and a > second gateway to another pool so hedging your bets.[/color] Or approach it from a different angle and set up fault tolerance at network level. For instance with Cisco routers you can use HSRP or VRRP to configure a virtual router address which is shared by two physical routers and you hand out the virtual router address to clients. ## HTH. Simon Novell Knowledge Partner * * * ## If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface, please show your appreciation and click on the star below. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 6:09pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/dhcp-and-default-gateway/25810/4 "2014-07-01T18:09:53Z")
Simon Flood sounds like they ‘said’: [color=blue] > The default gateway is just that, the default gateway. You can’t have > more than one. > > What you could do is assign a gateway to one pool of addresses and a > second gateway to another pool so hedging your bets.[/color] So my response to Simon’s comment is… Not quite sure how this could be done here. Here’s my setup. Had a site that was on a T-1, doing dhcp from our main location with another location as the redundant backup dhcp location. Now, the T-1 is gone, and the remote site connects via pt to pt wireless with the redundant backup dhcp location. I want to keep the remote site (that was via T-1) to have their normal default gateway, which is local to their building. Kicker is, a few people there use thin clients to connect to VMs that are currently housed at our main location. We’d like to have these VMs reside at the backup location so they would be in the same address range, etc as the physical machines. Technically, the VMs would have a different gateway (at the backup dhcp location) than the physical machines (at the old T-1 location). I have the remote site’s default gateway as the local switch, while the VMs’ default gateway is the switch at the backup dhcp location. Clear as mud now? 😉 See my predicament? – Stevo ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2014, 6:16pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/dhcp-and-default-gateway/25810/5 "2014-07-01T18:16:54Z")
Ok, changed my thinking a bit. I set everyone there to have a default gateway of the switch at the backup dhcp location. I figure if for whatever reason if the pt to pt wireless is down, it won’t matter what the default gateway is, they won’t get a dhcp address anyway, as that site will be down. duuuhhhh… 🙂 – Stevo