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How to setup Branch Office

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Hello! I am weak in WAN networking. We will be setting up our first branch office to another city using a private line T1. The branch office will log on seemlessly to Corp.'s NT domain and will use Corp.'s Internet connection. Firewall, NAT is on Corp. LAN. I will have two Cisco 2501 Routers to use to establish the link. The Corp. LAN internal addresses are 192.168.50.0-255 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0. DHCP is on LAN. How do I configure routers? Need to know about IP addresses, subnetting, DHCP function, the basics of this simple WAN solution. I will be using Cisco ConfigMaker to design. Thanks!!!

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by mcoya

I"m assuming you have one cisco 2501 at your satellite office as well. I would suggest a statice ip address between your two outside routers. Configure your internal e0 ports with you internalip address scheme. I would suggest keeping your internal addr. scheme similiar at both locations. On both of your outside router use the command ip-helper address to forward dhcp broadcast throught the WAN, only use one of your servers as a DHCP server. You also need to set up a trust between your two servers.

by ckilday

bmyers,
Okay, here's what you will need.
1. LAN addressing - you've got it: 192.168.50.0 255.255.255.0. This must be applied to the ethernet interface on the remote router. I recommend you use 192.168.50.1 255.255.255.0.
2. If you're using DHCPat corporate, you will need to know the address of the DHCP server. Add this line to the interface configuration: "ip helper-address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" (the address of the server)
3. Serial addressing - you NEED IT! Your T-1 is on a serial interface and needs a separate IP network to function. Since this is a private network, pick another 192.168.xxx.xxx network. Set up both routers to do "ip classless" routing, so you can get by with multiple serial lines within a single subnet. For example, use 192.168.100.4 255.255.255.252 as your network. That allows for one address to describe the network, two host addresses within the network, and a broadcast address. The serial port on one router will have an address of 192.168.100.5 255.255.255.252 and the other will have 192.168.100.6 255.255.255.252 The broadcast address would be 192.168.100.7.
4. You have a small network so a routing protocol isn't really necessary for this link. Use a static route as suggested by the other respondent. It would look something like this...Corporate: "route ip 192.168.50.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.100.6" where the "100.6" address is the ip address of the serial port on the REMOTE router. All traffic destined for the "50" network will go over theT-1 to the remote site. At the remote site, all of your non-local traffic can only go to the corporate site, so your remote route would look like this: "route ip 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.100.5". This is a default route and sends all traffic not part of your remote LAN over the serial port to the corporate router.

This should get you going. If you need more assistance, drop me a line at chris.kilday@ctg.com.

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