Murray Hammond Project Portfolio - WDBJ7 Televesion Multi-home BGP Internet Access Project Overview

1. BGP Load Sharing on Dual Routers with Two ISPs
WDBJ Television, Inc.
Roanoke, VA
Murray Hammond
Advanced Logic Industries
WDBJ7 is a local CBS Affiliate Digital Television
Station covering the Roanoke / Lynchburg DMA - a
26 county area of central and southwest Virginia.
WDBJ first signed on the air in 1955. It has
undergone a series of expansions over the years to
reach a much larger audience throughout central and southwest Virginia. WDBJ averages more
viewers throughout the day than any other station in the market and has been the dominant
source for local news for 50 years.
Problem: WDBJ had implemented a dual access Internet solution through the same Internet
Service Provider (ISP) with a Wireless Link and a T1 connection. If the primary T1 had
problems, they could manually switch over to the Wireless connection with less bandwidth and
still access the Internet. The station had experienced some service disruptions and wanted a
better failover solution. The current solution did not provide coverage in the event the ISP lost
service and this was no longer acceptable. WDBJ also had future plans for video over the
Internet and needed a fast and reliable solution. In addition, the 200+ user network needed to be
upgraded from Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000 to the 2003 versions with Active Directory.
Solution: Advanced Logic Industries proposed a 5MB Ethernet connection to two separate
ISP’s with two different points of entry to the building and two separate fiber backbones to the
Internet. Two Cisco 3825 routers were configured with Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)
and load balancing. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) was configured on each router to achieve
fully redundant connections to the Internet. If one ISP or router failed, the other router would
automatically handle all Internet traffic through the alternate ISP until the problem was fixed.
WDBJ also implemented redundant Firewalls using two Cisco ASA-5510’s. Finally, the older
servers were replaced with rack-mounted Hewlett-Packard Proliant Servers, with redundant
power supplies and redundant hard drives, and the system software was upgraded to Windows
Server 2003 running Active Directory and Exchange Server 2003.
Benefit: By implementing a fully redundant Internet access solution with three times the
bandwidth as before, WDBJ was able to move forward with its plans to stream video over the
Internet. Having 2 separate ISP’s with separate entry points to the building ensured failover in
the event one ISP had a failure at any point in its connection from WDBJ to the Internet,
including accidentally cutting the underground line coming into the building. The internal
network was now much more secure and easier to manage with the new fault tolerant servers
running in an Active Directory environment.
E. Murray Hammond Project Portfolio – WDBJ7 Multi-home BGP Solution