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Multiple Gateways

We have just upgraded to Version 2.8 of the Fortigate OS. We used to be able to have 2 gateways setup per static route as we have both a leased line and ADSL connection running at the same time. This feature no longer seems to be available, as we would like to do source routing and our web browsing traffic out our ADSL line. Can this still be done?
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Any further comment on this? Since the fortigate doesn' t speak bgp, you can' t use ibgp to prefer async routes on the external interface(s). Mulitple gateways would be nice even if they just resulted in an even distribution by halfing the traffic. This is certainly the case where border routers speaking bgp are in use.
VicAndr
New Contributor III

Well, multiple gateways and policy routing DOES work with FortiOS 2.8, at least for MR5 (didn’t try with previous versions). But with the FortiOS 2.8 Admin Guide it doesn’t clear how you could actually do it. We have 2 internet connections, both are with static IPs. When we were on 2.5 everything was clear and straightforward: one gateway is primary, where all traffic is forwarded to by default and second one is the secondary - to accept the traffic in case of primary gateway failure; both specified in a single route. Then with the help of policy routing you can force traffic to the secondary gateway when necessary. With 2.8 you do not have an option with 2 gateways in a single route any longer. At first it seemed to be obvious how I would configure the box to achieve the same goal: 2 static routes with different metrics pointing to different gateways; the route with the lower metric would be the primary (or default) and with higher metric – the secondary. Then, again with policy routing you could reroute traffic depending on your needs. I guess, most of us did the same thing and we know the result… After I spent some time trying to make it work I contacted Fortinet Support (they didn’t respond to my e-mail for 2 days, so eventually I had to call them). So here is my solution. To make it work with two gateways I had to configure 2 static routes. There are two important things here: 1. Both routes must have the same metric! 2. The primary (or default) route will be the one which is the second (lowest) in the list. As to the policy routing, it works as usually – there are no surprises here. There is only one little thing, which I am still concerned about: FortiGate interface associated with the secondary route does not respond to pings even if it is clearly enabled. Everything else seem (fingers crossed) to be working OK. I sent e-mail to Support with the question – so far there is no response (they became much slower in response – are very busy now ). VA
VicAndr
New Contributor III

Here is responce from Fortinet Support: Victor, Go into the CLI via console or telnet. Type in:
config sys global
   set asymroute enable
     end
This enables asymetrical routing. Try the ping again.
That' s what CLI Reference Guide (I' d love to have something more to read about this and other FortiGate' s features but it the only information source I' ve found) says about assemetric routing: Using asymmetric routing, packets that are part of the same session travel different routes and pass through different gateways. I am not sure here that for the sake of pinging I want to enable asymetric routing ...
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