D-Link DGS-3612G Product Manual - Page 205

xStack® DGS-3600 Series Layer 3 Managed Gigabit Ethernet Switch Policy Route Settings Policy Based routing is a method used by the Switch to give specified devices a cleaner path to the Internet. Used in conjunction with the Access Profile feature, the Switch will identify traffic originating from a device using the Access Profile feature and forward it on to a next hop router that has a more direct connection to the Internet than the normal routing scheme of your network. Take the example adjacent picture. Let's say that the PC with IP address 10.1.1.1 belongs to the manager of a company while the other PCs belong to employees. The network administrator hopes to circumvent network traffic by configuring the Policy Routing Switch to make a more direct connection to the Internet using a next hop router (10.2.2.2) that is directly attached to a Gateway router (10.3.3.3), thus totally avoiding the normal network and its related traffic. To accomplish this, the user must configure the Access Profile feature of the Switch to have the PC, with IP address 10.1.1.1 as the Source IP address and the Internet address as the destination IP address (learned through routing protocols), along with other pertinent information. Next, the administrator must configure the Policy Route window to be enabled for this Access Profile and its associated rule, and the Next Hop Router's IP address (10.2.2.2) must be set. Finally, this Policy Route entry must be enabled. Once completed, the Switch will identify the IP address using the Access Profile function, recognize that is has a Policy Based route, and then forward the information on to the specified next hop router, that will, in turn, relay packets to the gateway router. Thus, the new, cleaner path to the Internet has been formed. Figure 4- 23. Policy-based Routing example There are some restrictions and cautions when implementing this feature: 1. The access profile must first be created, along with the accompanying rule. If the administrator attempts to enable this feature without the access profile, an error message will be produced. 2. If the access profile is configured as Deny, the packet will be dropped and not forwarded to the next hop destination. 3. If the administrator deletes a rule or profile that is directly linked to a configured policy route, and error message will be prompted to the administrator. To configure the Policy Route feature, click L3 Features > Policy Route Settings, as shown below: Figure 4- 24. Policy Routing Settings window To remove an entry from the table, click its corresponding under the Delete heading. To add a new Policy Route, click the Add button, which will display the following window. 189