Internet facing servers and routing question

[mguzman4158]

Hi all, I would like to ask a network architecture question for best practice. I have two HUB locations and some internet facing servers. The question is: For internal traffic trying to hit those server, should I make them go out to the internet or access them through our internal PIP network? Thank you very much in advance for your inputs.

Cheers!

[Edison Ortiz]

You are sacrificing precious internet bandwidth while you can access those server via a LAN connection - I don't think that makes much sense.

Also, an internet failure is more likely than a LAN failure and I'm not sure if you have encryption towards the internet but that traffic will be unprotected once it leaves your network.

HTH,

__

Edison.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Not sure there one right answer or best practice; many considerations would be involved. Some primary considerations might be the cost of your PIP bandwidth vs. Internet bandwidth, whether you manage bandwidth (QoS) on PIP, what's the impact of passing traffic through 2 FWs (assuming servers behind one) rather than 1 or none, how critical this traffic's performance is to your business, etc.

Your question would be somewhat similar to using PIP or a VPN (across the Internet) for internal traffic. Again, many of the same considerations.