Network Issue

[Skemcin]

I know I can assign mulitple IP addresses to a single PC one by one. Then in IIS, I can have each point to a specific folder (server edition). Then each folder has its own IP address and the rest of anything that needs done can be done.Given that is the current situation, I have an issue where I know the power will be down in my server room for an entire day as power upgrades are installed. So, here is my problem.I'd like to take a laptop and put one webpage on it that says "Site unavailable until xx/xx/xxxx due to infrastructure upgrades....." and have that work for all the IP addresses that I have defined. That is to say that I'd like to assign a range of IPs to my laptop without having to type in each IP address into the "Advanced TCP/IP Settings" section of the Network Properties. Currently every IP that my ISP passes to me is defined in my firewall, which decides which box/folder to go to. So I need to see if Windows and IIS can do this as a temporary measure to not have users timing out Is this possible?While power is being upgraded, I'd like to run an extension cord from another location (not affected by the power outage) and then have my existing internet connect plug into the laptop directly. Then the Laptop would "catch" everything that my router routes.This would be better than just having everyone error out when they try to connect.Thanks in advance.

[justsomeguy]

I don't think you can get around assigning each IP to the laptop. If the laptop doesn't have the IP assigned to it, then it won't respond to requests that come in on that IP. You may be able to just change your router to forward traffic on all of the IPs to your laptop's one IP.But, either way, you wouldn't need to set up a separate site for each IP, you can just set up one site in IIS and have it respond to "all unassigned" IPs (but it would still need an entry in the network properties for each IP).I guess you would have to figure out if it is less work to have the router forward to a different IP, or to set up each IP in the laptop. We have a server here that responds to 12 or so IPs out of our block of 127, and we have each of them listed in the network properties box. But we also have several different ports on one of our IPs being forwarded by the router to different internal IPs.

[Skemcin]

Yeah, that was my plan - once I had all the IPs assigned to the laptop (by range or manually assigning them one-by-one) I was going to create an index.htm file in the default site with "all unassigned" as you mentioned. The first task was finding a short cut to assigning the IPs to the "catch-all" laptop (as I've now dubbed it). With it confirmed by you and now someone elsewhere, I can live with assigning the IPs manually. The big question now is how my ISP ARP Cache works.Logically, it would seem that my ISP would see the original MAC address is gone from my end of the internet connection and assume the direction of the new one (the catch-all laptop) and then reassume the original MAC address when the catch-all laptop is no longer available when the origninal router/firewall MAC address is available by having it plugged back in when the power is restored.Know much about ARP Cache?

[justsomeguy]

Not I, I only know enough about networks to solve the problems that I've been asked to solve in the past. I don't really like working with networks personally if I can avoid it. Configuring the Cisco router here made that pretty clear to me.

[Skemcin]

Update: One thing I am going to do today is take my catch-all laptop and assign an IP that I am not using globally and plug the laptop into the same switch the router is plugged into. From a PC outside the network, I'll try to access the laptop website by IP. IF that works, I'll call my wife and ask her to check at home (just for confirmation). That will tell me if my IPs are sitting on the router (versus assign as needed by the ISP - not getting alot of cooperation from various sources right now). Anyway, if that works then I'll take one of the IPs from a test site and assign that to the catch-all laptop and disable that same IP on the firewall. Allowing whatever time for the cache to flush, I should then be able to see that IP from outside the network and since I have a subdomain assigned to it and it is defined by the ISP, then I should get my catch-all laptop when I type in my test server IP or subdomain name.If (only three "ifs" I think so far) that works that it would seem that my plan will work. The only other thing I have to consider is the fact that the catch-all has to be set up to handle all the pages requests that I can think of - i.e. bookmarked pages or search result hits. So, my new question is, do you think it would be better to customize the 404 error page, or set up a 301 redirect to my "down for infrastructure upgrade" message?

[aspnetguy]

customizing the 404 page would be the least amount of work, I would do that

[Skemcin]

I ran a test on the system today and it doesn't seem that there will be amble time to set this up correctly. It turns out that the entire path/route is cached in the router. So, I cannot test the concept without taking everything down. Even then, I have to set up the laptop with the same IP as the current firewall since that is what is cached as being the location the T1 signal is directed to once it enters the building. I still think that it is feasible to do, I just can't use that "I'm new here" routine anymore.