VPN Keepalive and monitoring

[TODD BERGMAN]

Hello,

I have 30 locations hub and spoke off from an mpls network. There is also a DSL vpn backup to each location. Both MPLS and VPN terminate into a 2811 onsite at the remote branches. We are using IPsec VPN Tunnels. We are using eigrp as a routing protocal with a floating static at the remotes. So when the mpls goes down at the remote traffic is routed accross the higher cost vpn link.

That said how can we keep the tunnels up full time? Then how can we monitor the tunnel?

Help on this is greatly appreciated.

[Todd Pula]

You could use GRE over IPSec to satisfy this requirement and then influence path selection with EIGRP. You could then monitor either the logical tunnel interface or a loopback interface. Alternatively you could look at a DMVPN network for backup.