Branch Location Over The Internet

Tue Aug 11 18:21:09 UTC 2015

We have an enterprise that has a headquarter office with redundant fiber
connections, its own ASN, its own /22 IP block from ARIN, and a couple of
gigabit internet connections from multiple providers. The office is taking
full BGP routes from tier 1 providers using a Juniper MX80.

They are establishing their first branch location, and need the branch
location to be able to securely communicate back to headquarters, AND be
able to use a /24 of  headquarters public IP addresses. Ideally the device
at the HQ location would hand out public IP address using DHCP to the other
side of the tunnel at the branch location.

We know that in an ideal world it would be wise to get layer 2 transport
connections from HQ to the branch location, but lets assume that is not an
option. Please don't flood this thread about how it could be an option
because it's not at this time. This setup will be temporary and in service
for the next year until we get fiber to the branch site.

Let's assume at the branch location we can get a DOCSIS cable internet
connection from a incumbent cable provider such as Comcast, and that
provider will give us a couple static IP address. Assume as a backup, we
have a PPPoE DSL connection from the ILEC such as Verizon who gives us a
dynamic IP address.

What solution could we put at the HQ site and the branch site to achieve
this? Ideally we would want the solution to load balance between the
connections based on the connections speeds, and failover if one is down.
The cable connection will be much faster speed (probably 150Mbps down and
10 Upload) compared to the DSL connection (10 download and 1 upload). If we
need more speed we can upgrade the cable modem to a higher package, but for
DSL that is the max speed so we might have to get multiple DSL lines. The
cable solution could always be used as the primary, and the DSL connection
could only be used as backup if that makes things easier.

If you were to do this with Juniper or Cisco gear what would you have at
each location? What technology would you use?

I know there is Pepewave and a couple of other software solutions that seem
to have a proprietary load balancing solutions developed, but I would
prefer to use a common Cisco or Juniper solution if one exists.

There will be 50 users at the branch office. There is only one branch
location at this time, but they might expand to a couple more but under 10.