Don't know what to do: routing or bridging

Hi folks,

I assume this question must have been asked many times, if so, sorry for
the inconvenience. I think I've read all introductory related material
to bridging (ebtables, brctl, etc) and I'm using routing on many of my
servers. But now, there is a new project I'm on, and I don't really know
what to do: routing or briding. An illustration is always the best way
to clear things up, so:


|--------------|      |---------------|    |--------------|
| webserver n  | ---- | router/bridge | -- | (S.P. net?)  | -- Internet
| 192.168.76.5 |   |  |---------------|    |--------------|
|--------------|   |
                 (vpn)
                   |
|--------------|   |
| fallback n   |----
| 192.168.75.5 |
|--------------|


In the above example I used a webserver and a fallback. Of course, there
are multiple (n) webservers (and for every webserver a fallback, so
multible fallbacks) with multiple IPs. The IPs are "internal" IPs, but
of course I've got an "external" IP for every webserver (together with
it's fallback). The router/bridge is directly connected to the internet
with one of it's physical network interfaces.

I think it's most important that the router/bridge is transparent:
no-one should ever have to know about it's existance. Also, I don't have
access to any of the router of my service provider, which rules out the
option of using my router/bridge as a gateway (correct me if I'm
wrong!). On the other hand, I don't want the router/bridge to have "n"
network interfaces (aliases) to "catch" all the network traffic.

Can anyone give me a helping hand in this? It's enough if I can reach
the internet from "webserver n" and the internet can reach "webserver
n". Fallback configuration should be trivial if I've got that working.

I hope the situation is clear now, if not, please ask for more
information! Thanks in advance very much!

Cheers,

Bas van Schaik,
Junior network engineer










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