Overview

The Wanos ARP or WARP protocol is a Layer 2 feature introduced in v.4.0.4 for Bridge mode that provides high availability, redundancy and fail-over capability for multiple gateway paths.

The protocol allows multiple gateway routers to share the same primary master gateway IP Address, without any configuration required on the gateway routers or the servers. The design goal of WARP was to be completely agnostic and hence it is compatible with any vendor router. Since the protocol works on layer 2 it is transparent to both routers and servers.

The benefit of WARP is that it can be used to add any simple broadband router that does not support HSRP or VRRP or more advanced intelligent fail-over protocols as an intelligent backup path for e.g. an advanced Cisco router.

At the same time that WARP is enabled Wanos also monitors both paths to the remote Wanos peer to measure and track Round Trip Time (RTT) and Timeouts. When configurable RTT or number of Timeout thresholds are exceeded for a configurable period of time, the path is transparently disabled and switched to the alternative path.

How it works

• The primary path is used as the master IP for all gateway traffic.
• Servers and workstations continue to use the primary IP address as their gateway and no configuration change is needed.
• The secondary gateway is then added to the network along side the primary.
• Wanos is configured with both Primary and Secondary gateway.
• Once they are configured, the path RTT and Timeouts to the remote peer are tracked.
• When the primary link fails, WARP enables a Layer-2 Gateway keep-alive by responding to ARP queries for the primary path.
• Wanos directs the WAN traffic over the secondary path.
• End hosts are unaware that the primary path is offline.
• If preemption is enabled, Wanos will restore the primary link when the conditions meet thresholds.